This post is geared toward my ED 610: Mobile Educational Technology students. I suspect few, if any of them will read this since I failed miserably at consistently posting to my blog. Even though I promised that I would keep up… I failed.
Throughout the Spring 2014 Semester, my ED 610 students have posted a plethora of amazing mobile apps for educators and education. I’ve compiled them into Word documents based on the module for which they were posted, but I wish I could do more. I’m considering some sort of searchable database or website in order to share these apps with the world. Does anyone have an idea of a good way to keep these apps available? My only idea right now is to create a Google Form for data entry, then the apps would be stored in a Google Spreadsheet.
I’ve concluded that requiring one app every week from the students was probably a little too much for a 15-week class. When I taught the class during the summer, 5 weeks was more reasonable. I suspect that the students tired of doing that assignment each and every week, and it became obvious that many students were only doing it at the last-minute. I might consider changing this assignment in the future. However, the list of apps the resulted was astonishing. There were some duplicates, but do the math… 19 students posting a new app every week for 15 weeks. Whoa!
If you are reading this post as a current or former ED 610 student, I would enjoy your suggestions on what you might find important to teach in the Mobile Educational Technology class. What is important? What is not important? What did we miss? What did we overdo?
Finally, if you are reading this post for no reason other than because you follow it, what might you hope to learn in a course about Mobile Educational Technology. I tried to stay out of the technical realm of how things work and also avoided the topics of how to get mobile devices in the classroom. We just focused on what’s available for a variety of educational purposes.
Thanks for reading.
Dr. John McCullough 
As a current ED 610 student I found great success in this course. As in most of John’s classes, the opportunity to explore while learning has proved beneficial to both my educational and professional careers.
I do agree that 15 App of the Week posts was too much. However, only five during a five-week course doesn’t seem like nearly enough. I really didn’t feel pressure until after #10. With the nature of the course it was so easy to find so many. After 10 I felt like I was pulling to find something just for the sake of posting. In turn, my last few weren’t as strong as my first posts. Maybe cut from three to two for each module? I thought the way that the modules and content were dived was spot on.
Another frustration with the app postings was classmates repeating apps from the get-go. I made a conscious effort to scroll through previous posts at the beginning to make sure that no one posted about my app before I wrote my review. After a while I stopped because 1) there were getting to be too many and 2) no one else (that’s dramatized…not everyone) seemed to be giving it any thought. It was taking me too much time. Also, so many people would only post 2-3 sentences about the app without giving any in-depth opinions or reviews. I found quite a few of the ones that I read to be completely useless as I did some of the comments as well. “I can’t wait to use this!”, and that’s it. A lot of times there was no depth and it was hard to actually engage in a discussion.
I guess it’s sometimes easier for me because talking and writing come easily to me, hence the four paragraph response to this blog post. It’s just frustrating to try and post meaningful comments when you get six “I’ll definitely look into this” back in return. I definitely thought the course was totally worth it and I have found so many new ways to use my devices in my classroom. I’ve also recommended the class to some of my colleagues. Rant over. I hope that helps!
Thanks Mitchel!
I just wanted to let you know that I recently looked back at some of the apps we had posted in class throughout the duration of the spring semester. My husband has started his own exterior painting company and wanted me to create a sales binder with before and after pictures of his finished houses. I went back to the collage and photo apps that we had posted during one of the Modules. I found one easily that another student had posted that I had not yet tried. Within fifteen minutes we had two amazing professional “before and after” pictures. My husband was so impressed that he even asked me, “Have you used this before? These look amazing and you did it so fast!” Before this class it would have taken me forever to figure out how to do something like that. The improvement that I have seen in myself using mobile technology in and out of the classroom is remarkable! I really learned a lot from this class. Thank you for all that you do!
That’s awesome! Way to go!! Thanks for sharing and for the nice comments.