Almost all of the fifty undergraduate college students this semester enrolled in my Techology 4 Teachers class have cell phones with text messaging plans. Given this available technology, it makes sense to use SMS messaging as one of several communication tools to keep students updated about changes as well as reminders related to our class. This evening I created a five minute screencast to demonstrate how Textmarks can be used to send broadcast messages to students. (Note the flash version of this screencast embedded below is not currently viewable on an iPhone or iPod Touch, but the version on Screenr is.)
As I mentioned in the screencast, PLEASE NOTE some of the advertisements Textmarks sends for free accounts are NOT appropriate for K-12 students. If you consider ads to “Chat w hot singles HERE” not appropriate for your K-12 students (which I’d argue they are NOT,) university students or other adult Textmark subscribers, I HIGHLY encourage you to pay for a commercial account with Textmarks so you can send ad-free messages. (Note: I am not affiliated in any way with Textmarks. More details about my affiliations are available on my blog disclosure policy.) The lowest priced plan ($10 a month) lets you send up to 100 ad-free Textmark messages to your subscribers with two different “keywords,” which function as “channels” to which people can subscribe.
I used a short Google Presentation on my iPhone to introduce this screencast.
I learned about Textmarks in 2007 from Liz Kolb‘s outstanding K-12 Online Conference presentation, “Cell Phones as Classroom Learning Tools.”
Have you had experiences, good or bad, using Textmarks or another broadcast SMS solution with students? (If you are a vendor representative of a SMS messaging product, please do NOT leave a comment here. I won’t approve it.) I wish there was a way to setup a keyword/channel which would not include dating related ads.
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