Getting Mobilised

Summary / overview

This activity builds on the original Getting Started collaboration activity, and has adapted some elements to incorporate usage of mobile phones for communication between students and teachers in partner schools. Like Getting Started, this could be the first collaboration activity partner schools undertake together. It follows the initial setting up activities outlined in Getting Started and then outlines the first round of activities you can undertake with your partner school. Instead of relying on internet and email communications, the activities here rely on imaginative use of mobile phones! (More activities will be added to this collaboration activity in the coming weeks.)

Establishing your relationship with your partner school and using available communication technologies, such as mobile phones, to make contact.

Through the Getting Mobilised collaboration, partner schools will:

1.     establish the ground rules for acceptable behaviour and safe and ethical use of mobile technology with their students

2.     build on prior knowledge of their students and their partner school by having completed the early activities within the Getting Started project (particularly those activities for Weeks 1 - 4) and

3.     begin collaborating and sharing information about each other using mobile technologies.

English / Bahasa Indonesia

Subject Area(s)

English (Reading and Writing), Information and Communications Technology, Studies of Society and the Environment (History and Geography), Mathematics

4 - 6 weeks

Before you use mobile phones (or any type of mobile technology) with your students, there are several important things you need to consider:

1.     Does your school have a policy towards use of mobile phones in the classroom? You will need to ensure that your school leaders understand your reasons for communicating with your partner school through mobile technology (such as unreliable internet connections) and also communicate these with your parent community.

2.     Establish early on, what type of mobile phone functionality is available to teachers and students in both partner schools. For instance, SMS/texting should be available to all, but, do all the phones have the capacity to take photos or videos and send them? Do the service providers for the mobile phones allow users to send messages internationally?

3.     Also, work out whether or not you will expect your students to use their own mobile phone, (or the school’s or teacher’s) and establish a system for monitoring and managing this. Remember, you could use the Student Management Team (if you have established one in your class) to help you.

4.     Other potential issues such as privacy, appropriate communication, timing of communication and how much it might cost to send text/multimedia and video messages should be discussed and agreed upon before the first communications are made.