Send SMS Text Messages using Email

AwayFind is a powerful web application that lets you route urgent email messages - from specific people or topics - to SMS, IM, or Voice.

I am looking forward to using AwayFind with my students this year. Generally speaking, they are tied at the hip to their mobile phones and love sending and receiving text messages!! The same cannot be said for using their email accounts, which they may or may not check periodically.

Now, with AwayFind I can send an email message to my students (as a whole group or individually) and have it sent on to their mobile phones. The message is only forwarded if the email account is not open when the message is received. The actual message also remains in the inbox.

And what is even better is that AwayFind is free (for the moment anyway) and is part of the Google Apps Marketplace integrating perfectly with a Google Apps account.

The SMS message can be activated by the content of the email subject line, so once you have an agreed 'trigger' then you can pass this keyword on to any other teachers or administrators that may need to contact the students as well.

This means that students can be contacted on their mobile phones, by their class teachers, without having to pass on their phone details. And teachers don't have to worry about using their mobile phones to contact students. That's got to be a Win-Win situation!

I think this system will work really well with short messages or notices. Messages over a length of 50 characters will be split over several SMS messages. This could become a bit annoying if a lot of long messages were being sent! However, you could use the initial short message as a prompt for students to check their email for a second more detailed communication.

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Take The Traveler IQ Challenge

Travelpod provides the Traveler IQ Challenge, which is an interesting little interactive quiz to test "how well do you know your world".

Select a quiz from a number of categories including:
*The World, *North America, *Europe, *World Capitals, *Canada, *Asia, *UNESCO Sites, *Africa, *Latin America, *Oceania/Australasia, *Flags of the World, *Photos of the World, *USA Challenge or *Amazing Race

During the quiz, the question pops up and you must click as close as possible to the location on the map. Your score increases based on the speed and accuracy of your response. To progress onto the next level, in the world quiz, you must reach a certain score so you can't just click anywhere!!

A great little resource for geography or tourism students.

The Traveler IQ challenge ranks geographic knowledge of cities such as: San Jose Del Cabo, Mazatlan or Boston by comparing results against 5,888,795 other travelers. Brought to you by TravelPod, a TripAdvisor Media Network member

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Open Access Scholarly Press

AU Press is "dedicated to open access and digital publishing in order to serve the needs of a global community of adult learners and researchers" and to this end provides freely available eBooks, eJournals and websites.

You can browse for eBooks by author, title, series or subject as well as searching by keyword. Over 20 different categories are included ranging from Anthropology to Women's Studies.

The technology section has two very interesting publications

• Emerging Technologies in Distance Education (pdf) and
• Mobile Learning: Transforming the Delivery of Education and Training (pdf)

A range of open access electronic journals in various disciplines in the social sciences and humanities are also provided.

Interestingly, AU Press indicate that "much evidence demonstrates that in practice, academic presses sell more books by making their content freely available on the web". It would be great to see more adopting this approach!

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Sharing Knowledge with Widgets

The Wolfram|Alpha widgets are mini-apps built on top of Wolfram|Alpha queries. You can easily build your own or use any of the ready made useful widgets found in the Gallery.

These widgets can do just about anything "from calculating the calories in a
recipe to solving complex problems" so long as Wolfram|Alpha can answer the particular query.

There are literally hundreds of widgets to choose from. The most popular categories include Astronomy, Culture & Media, Education, Geography, Health & Medicine, Money & Finance, Physics, Mathematics, Socioeconomic and Weather.

I just love the way intermediate steps and diagrams can be included as part of the answer - see the featured examples below. Gives a whole new meaning to "Bite" sized learning.

I have also included the 'FETAC Grades' calculator, which I created earlier. Go on give it a try. You know you want to....

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EduBlogging Research Poll

Karenne Sylvester is currently researching EduBlogging and is looking for your help!

Karenne is looking for volunteers who will help out with "answering quick (usually under a minute, sometimes up to 5 minutes) polls on some of the questions" which arise regarding Edublogging, such as "who we are and what we're doing in our classrooms and with colleagues".

If you have the time and want to help out just fill in the application form.

Once Karenne has collected significant data she will convert "the graphs and charts into higher resolution slides and load these all up into wikimedia commons so that you too can use them in whatever way you wish!"

Has to be good for everyone!!!

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Your Digital Footprint and You

Steve Johnston created this video

after seeing a Harris Interactive poll showing how employers are increasingly using social networking sites to screen job candidates.

Certainly makes for a good argument as to why students (and teachers!) should care about their digital footprint. I like the way Steve also highlights the good aspects. Shows there is no reason why you cannot create a positive digital footprint.

Definitely one to share with your students.


Find more videos like this on The Educator's PLN

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