In the United States, schools are in a constant battle to try to keep cell phones out of schools. Districts issue policies that ban cell phones; parents protest the rules as a “safety issue”; court cases result. Few are seeing the educational possibilities. Trying to express my own feelings about cell phones in schools in less than 50 words recently, I said:
“Schools ban cell phones out of fear and the lack of a vision of potential advantages. How much would that change if every child could access interactive textbooks, instructional videos, educational simulations, collaborative communities, and an electronic library via their phone? We should teach students responsible use and take advantage of this powerful (and potentially free) tool for learning and collaboration. “
And while I do see potential for cell phones for learning here, the far greater potential is in the developing world. It seems to me that if OER is going make a difference to education worldwide, it is likely to be tied to mobile phone usage. BBC just ran a good article about this.
I’ve been thinking about potentially interesting OER projects on which to collaborate with developing country schools. This (combined with the dictionary project) just might be it.
Mobile Polish-English Practical Translating Dictionary. Replaces all kinds of phrasebooks as it is very flexible.
It has about 80.000 entries, some 70 per cent are phrases, idioms and multiword expressions.
It is poossible to builf expressions and sentences and send them as bilingual text messages.
Good for any pairs of languages.