Drape's Takes: Mobile Phone Mania

Mobile Phone Mania

In my last post, I mentioned a recent survey conducted by the Pew Internet & American Life project. There has been some interesting data trickling out as a result. According to the study, 73% of Americans have a cell (mobile) phone. Amazing. Nevertheless, I'm still left with several questions: How many of these cell-phone-toting Americans are our students, and how many students world-wide have mobile phone access?

Participation in my recent (unscientific, but hopefully interesting) attempt to learn how many of the world's students have access to mobile phone technology has been a little underwhelming, to say the least. Until Graham Wegner's thoughtful plea I had received no data from schools outside of Utah (a sad thought, indeed). Therefore, I both thank Graham for his valiant effort and ask you, dear reader, if this quest to quantify mobile phone access in the K-12 classroom is worthwhile. Choose your own adventure from the options below.

Adventure #1 - Yes, Acquiring Mobile Phone Access Data = Gallant Endeavor

Great! Follow these steps to help out the cause:

Check out the current results to see the data we're collecting (quick edit - for some reason, Google Spreadsheets is not always granting access to viewers - I'll include a screenshot below of some of the data we've collected so far). If you'd prefer to remain anonymous, I'm OK with that, but we should at least know what school your polling.
You may submit your results as a comment to this post (or email me directly, if you prefer).
If you're a blogger, please spread the word. The more data we can accumulate, the better our vision. To be honest, I'm not in this for any "credit" (if such a thing really exists) - but would love to have data from as many schools possible. In fact, I'd like to give you the credit, so if you want to send me a link to your blog (or website), I'll attach the link to your name in the spreadsheet.

Following established edublogosphere protocol, I will give you a deadline for all data submissions: May 23, 2007. If we can't gather it in a week, then we might as well be using a telegraph.

Disclaimer: I realize that this kind of a study isn't as scientific as it probably should be. Nevertheless, I think it can be quite helpful and can be conducted far more quickly. As more people understand that there is a significant population of teachers that would like to use phones to teach, then perhaps more will create support materials (lesson plans, etc.) that include mobile phone use.

Data To Be Collected (Click to enlarge)