AFTER MORE THAN THREE WEEKS without the use of wired broadband service, I've learned enough about how to leverage portable broadband connectivity for e-learning. More importantly, I've reaffirmed my faith in text messaging (without becoming as avid an advocate as Liam Burke), I've rediscovered the elegance of mail-to interactions, and I've concluded that social networking works a charm when it's portable and prescient.
Believe in SMS texting. Elegant text messaging, now available several places in Ireland as an unlimited, perpetual communications method, is valuable when you can cultivate it as a listening channel. As a college lecturer, I've watched students drop everything (and one even ran off the road) to read incoming text messages. While my broadband was down, I felt like I was able to stay abreast some parts of my world by reading free text updates coming to my mobile phone from Jaiku. I've figured out how to offer text message updates from college courses and have also set a percentage of continuous assessment credit to be awarded to students who participate in extending the classroom through text message conversations.
