A d c o l o g

Voting systems have always been contentious in ACL – they cost a lot and one system shared among a whole directorate can undermine the efficiency of what we’re trying to do.  What would be really good would be if all the students carried their own voting systems with them , all the time.

Until recently, I’d have said that sounded a bit like an idealistic statement.  But today I discovered SMSPoll and various similar tools which allow you do exactly this – through  mobile phone text messaging.

OK, so it’s not perfect.  Not all learners have mobile phones and some might resent having to spend 10p on a vote.  However, this month mobile calls are set to exceed landline calls for the first time and most mobile packages now come with unlimited or high numbers of text messages.

The different SMS Poll sites available vary greatly.  Sadly, almost all the free ones are for US Telephone numbers, though this may well change soon.  There are at least two that work for UK numbers, and both are free initially, though there are limitations and a commercial package might be needed for full use.

Cardboard Fish allows you to add SMS tools to your website including polls, comments and blogs.  The problem is, you need a server to do so and, while you can use Google Pages or Geocities etc, they are limited in how they display it.  It is free of charge.

SMSPoll is great, visually. Sadly, it only allows polls at the moment and the free package is very limited.  The fantastic aspect oF this system, however, is that you can put poll results live into powerpoint (assuming you have an internet connection of course).

This doesn’t fully address the voting system problem – however it goes some way in helping organisations with lower budgets to make use of technology, while allowing votes that go on longer term.

UPDATE:  I tried SMS POLL during a talk at Barnsley yesterday and it worked really well.  It takes a while for the votes to update, so I gave people the questions, went through a few PowerPoint slides then returned to it, the feed coming live from the net into PowerPoint via the O2 dongle.  For an analysis of the results, see the upcoming post on Wesenwille.

Yesterday I was at RSC YH’s event on supporting learners using mobile technology.

While the majority of the event focussed around some FE funding, a number of the technologies demonstrated had a real benefit to ACL, whether in the classroom or maybe even staff development.

One example was RedHalo, a platform that allows multiple mobile devices running Windows Mobile to be synced with an online “mothership”. Therefore, teachers can send , say, a video or podcast to all the students on their list, which they can pick up and look at in their own time.  It works the other way too.  Students could complete an assignment , put it on their mobile device and upload it back to the teacher.  What’s great about this is a restricted version is free of charge.

Lillian Soon & Dave Sugden, who are currently undertaking some work with RSC YH, also presented a short presentation about using text messaging, including Bluetooth Broadcasts, which sends a message to every Bluetooth device in the room.  Some very real potential in this for ACL, both in terms of community and learner engagement and day-to-day functionality.