Journal #4
From Toy to Tool: Audio-blogging with cell phones

Summary: First off I would like to say this is a great article. It covers all questions that one might ask while reading it. It talks about audio-blogging which is when a student or someone records a conversation or something they are saying and then has that sent to a blog, such as blogger.com. The teacher is trying to incorporate the student’s everyday toy into a learning tool. She talks about how her and her students have never been charged extra on their phone plan by doing this; however she encourages you to check your plan before using it. She says that she has always offered her phone to any students who either don’t have a phone or don’t want to use theirs. She thinks it a great way for students to get involved in technology and it will help them to learn with their everyday social device. Also, many teachers don’t like cell phones on campus or in their classroom. She says one way to get around this is to have the students only bring their phones when they need it for an assignment and also to only have it on during this assignment. She worries that using a cell phone is just an easy way for a student to cheat in class. Great article, I have never heard of audio-blogging until I read this!
Questions: 1- Can audio-blogging be used by younger students as well? Yes! She stated that you can either file a grant with the school and have a few phones with plans provided for the class or you can offer your phone to them to use. This is a way for them to record their readings, such as a book or poetry and also to remember something they learned that day in class. It’s something that all students should try, young and old. It’s a form of technology that is going to explode and it’s going to be a great explosion, think of all the trees we will save! : )
2- Why use audio-blogging when we have video cameras? Audio-blogging isn’t out to get rid of video cameras, it’s a way to record a quick note or maybe even an interview without all of the devices. It’s just a simple cell phone, which almost everyone has. So why would you want to go and buy a $300 video camera when you can just use your cell phone? Especially since cell phones have video and picture messaging on them these days. It saves you a tone of money and time because it’s uploaded to the computer for you. All you have to do it speak and click!