Interesting Blogger use for Educators

We occasionally hear from you regarding fun and innovative ways you are applying HeyCosmo applications. Some are amusing while others are really practical. I spoke with an educator—an AP teacher from one of the leading schools in the Silicon Valley over the weekend. She who gave me a usage scenario for Blaster that helps her by keeping her students’ minds focused through the week in preparation to upcoming tests.

She told me that educators in her school, and other schools in the district, are constantly looking for methods to communicate and inform students. Most school districts have automated, inflexible announcement systems that allow the district to send automated announcements to the parents of students (“your son missed school today,” “your daughter was tardy for third period,” etc.) but not to the students.

After she found HeyCosmo Blaster she immediately grew excited about the potential for using it in her teaching curriculum and brought up the following points:

• Not all of her students had computers.
• All of her students had cell phones.
• School district automated systems were for administrative use, not for use as a teaching tool in the classroom.
• Schools are bound by budget issues.

She mentioned one teacher had all of her students’ cell phone numbers and would send text messages to them as reminders of tests and quizzes. The problem with this is the exposure of her personal phone number to students—a very bad practice. The solution is HeyCosmo Blaster.

HeyCosmo Blaster is a free application that is immensely flexible and does not expose the teacher’s personal information. A very simple application would be to announce an event to all her students using a simple Blast. But the potential is in Blaster to do so much more by giving Options.

Example Scenario:
You are a teacher of US History and have an upcoming exam on Friday that you would like to remind your students about. By sending them a HeyCosmo Blast that they have to interact with and you can monitor you give powerful reminder to your students.

When you open the HeyCosmo Blaster app you are given a text area to place your message. Beneath the text message box choose “Click here to give them options,” link. Make sure that you tell them to “Press 1” for option one, “Press 2” for option two, etc. or they will not know to push these. You are able to open more options if you wish, but it is probably better if you not bog the students down with too many choices. The Responses to each option is what the student will hear if they choose that option. Also, remember to give a reminder in each of the option responses.

Example Script:

• Message: Who was president of the United States when the Vietnam war started?
• Option #1: Press 1, if you think John F. Kennedy was president.
• Response #1: Sorry, but that is not correct. The test is this Friday and you will need to know this.
• Option #2: Press 2, if you think Lyndon B. Johnson was president.
• Response #2: Correct, but Friday's test has 150 questions and you should be prepared.
• Option #3: or Press 3 if you think Richard M. Nixon was president.
• Response #3: Sorry, but that is not correct. The test is this Friday and you will need to know this.

When you send the HeyCosmo Blast you will be able to watch as your students listen and respond to your question in real-time.

Recommendations:

• Send yourself a message first so you know what your students hear before you send out the real Blast.
• Don’t give too many options to which your students will have to listen.
• Review the results in class the next day with the whole class so they know you are monitoring.
  

If you have other interesting usage scenarios please post them as a comment.

Use the HeyCosmo Blaster application from the website (www.heycosmo.com) or Facebook to communicate, educate, entertain and remind.