Saturday 26 January 2013

My new mobile phone - I have hardly used it as a phone yet!

I finally got my new mobile phone on Wednesday although I wish it had come a week earlier as the following day one of my sisters and her family came to stay for a few days, making it inappropriate to spend much time getting to see what I can now do that I couldn't with my old phone.

The advantages of a Samsung Galaxy SIII over an HTC Wildfire S are that I can seemingly install endless apps and start experimenting with them; it is very fast downloading and installing, the screen is twice the size and very high definition and it doesn't need recharging so often.

The disadvantages are: the price; it's more awkward to hold in landscape mode; I'm much more worried that someone might like to steal it.

The day after I got it I used it to video three of my students acting out a couple of scenes from the DVD accompanying our coursebook, while another student videoed another group. The students did it really well and the quality of the picture and sound was great and I'll probably never borrow the mini video cameras I pushed for the school to but three of - we can do it with our mobiles!

The following morning I left my phone at home while we went for a walk and when we came back the two videos were safely uploaded to YouTube using out home wi-fi. I then edited the titles and descriptions and sent the URL to the whole class in Edmodo.

It was done really spontaneously, when I thought "Why not?" and asked one group of students how they felt about filming themselves doing their improvised version and putting it on YouTube and when they said "No way.", I said it would be unlisted so the only people who could see it would be people who had the URL. They said "OK"and we took advantage of an empty adjacent room to split into two groups and I filmed one group while the other group, who had 4 students and 3 roles filmed themselves with a different student filming using their iphones.

One of the students said he had a YouTube account and would upload his recording and post the URL on Edmodo, although he hasn't done it yet, sadly, and the other said he would use his DropBox account to let me download it and upload it to YouTube. I'm afraid he hasn't done this yet either.

I enjoyed the whole thing and the students looked as if they enjoyed it, too. I look forward to getting their reactions to the videos when they watch them. Many of them use their mobiles to check Edmodo, so they may not have wanted to use their data plan to watch the videos.


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