New Mobile Tool
I finally joined all my students by getting rid of my old, beat-up dinosaur telephone and buying a new one from Vodafone. It connects to the internet and has a 3.2 megapixel camera that does video and sound, which will be useful for communicating on the read/write web. I’m looking forward to exploring ways of using these tools in my EFL classrooms. More to follow on this topic.
Bee wrote:
Perfect beauty!
Now I know what I need to keep up with the Joneses
Posted 03 Jan 2006 at 5:27 am ¶
Aaron wrote:
Well, it isn’t perfect. The reception is weak (all Vodaphone reception is such), the use of the TV drains the battery in minutes, and it’s bulky compared to most cell phones, called keitai denwa in Japanese. But it takes damn good pics.
Posted 03 Jan 2006 at 9:49 am ¶
John G wrote:
So snap a photo of your office and upload it. I’d like to see your new work place anyway.
Posted 05 Jan 2006 at 12:40 am ¶
Marco Polo wrote:
Is it 3G? I have a 3G Vodafone, and they are still working on expanding the reception area of 3G phones, but I’m assuming it will just expand.
Something I hadn’t thought of when I got it a few months ago, is QR code capability (is this Japanese? I don’t know what the English for it is): it’s a small square with squiggly lines all over it: you hold your phone’s camera up to this square (on flyers, adverts, magazine pages, even websites) and click and it gives you cell-phone access to the website (I think). I wish I’d got it, altho a quick informal survey of my students and children revealed that only a few knew about this capability and even fewer thought it was valuable or useful (or knew what it could do!), but there is a wide range of awareness of such matters amongst the Japanese college-going population, and it seems the ones I teach are amonst the less-”wired” (sniff).
Posted 01 Feb 2006 at 3:29 pm ¶
Marco Polo wrote:
Re QR code, go to my blog here and scroll down almost to the bottom of the page, and in the LH sidebar you’ll see the QR code thingy I was talking about. I think this has to do with being able to access the blog-page from a cell-phone. You can, of course, post messages and photos to goo blogs from any cell-phone, regardless of QR-code capability, tho I haven’t done much of that yet.
Posted 01 Feb 2006 at 3:33 pm ¶
James Farmer wrote:
Drool
Thanx for the edublogs.org link
Posted 02 Feb 2006 at 7:27 am ¶
Aaron wrote:
Hey Marco…no, it is not 3G, purposely so. I wanted to get a “normal”, non-3G model, since most of my students don’t have the 3G system. I want to play with what they have. Besides, I don’t think I would use 3G at all, mostly since I always have wireless acess whereever I go with my laptop.
As for that squiggly code thing you mention, my phone does have that capabilty, as do many phones these days. I tested it out on your site and it works like a charm: I can read your blog while riding the train or bus. I suppose that might be a useful thing for students who have no computer.
Posted 02 Feb 2006 at 1:35 pm ¶
Aaron wrote:
Hey James….hope you find some sponsors. I’ll certainly keep my eyes open for opportunities.
Posted 02 Feb 2006 at 1:36 pm ¶