In a classroom with 60 future teachers I tried an experiment. "Everybody have their mobile phones?" I asked. They looked surprised. "OK," I told these Michigan State University students, "you have 15 minutes to receive a text message. The message must say (1) where the person is, (2) what they ate for lunch today, and (c) when they were born."

I offered extra credit if the response came from outside the United States, or if it was in another language. The room was filled with fingers flying across tiny keypads, and quickly we had more responses than students. "What could we do with this information?" I asked. "Graph it? Map it? Analyze it? Translate the French, German, Spanish and Urdu messages?"

The idea wasn't original. It had arrived in a You-Tube link from a friend after a College of Education debate about phones in the classroom. Many argued they didn't belong.

I argued that mobile phones are the most powerful communication and information device ever created, and that they are already everywhere. How can we not, I asked, use and teach with such a remarkable tool?

Article link