After that post, I set up a survey on the class website to get students’ thoughts about using one or both of these services. Here are the results:

Do you think having a way to get alerts and reminders on your phone is a good idea?
Yes = 77%
No = 23%

Would you prefer a one-way system (only the teacher sends alerts; no one can reply) or a two-way system (anyone can send/reply to the group)?
Two-Way = 60%
One-Way = 40%

Given that, we (myself and a few other teachers) have decided to set up LoopNote “loops” for the AP 11 and AP 12 students on a completely opt-in basis. Those who want to receive any alerts we might send (important announcements or reminders only) can join the appropriate “loop.”

We’ve also decided to use iTexter for an upcoming field trip to New York City. All the students will have the cell phone numbers of the chaperones and the other members of their groups (we’re breaking them into groups of ten). They will also have to program the number of their group’s chaperone into their phone. We’ll also set up an iTexter number for everyone on the trip and ask them to program that number into their phones in case anyone (student or chaperone) needs to let everyone else know something.

Seems like good ideas. If we have any phenomenal or dreadful results, I’ll let you know.

To illustrate this point: I didn’t get a reply to any of the emails I sent out yesterday, but I got text-message replies immediately. The next day in class, many of them said “I didn’t get the email.” I discovered that this usually meant “I didn’t check my email.”

That got me thinking. I definitely don’t want to collect all of my students’ cell numbers and plug them into my phone, but it would be nice to be able to send all of them a text message about important announcements or reminders. So … I went searching, and I found two kinds of services: one-way alerts and two-way groups.

LoopNote is a one-way alert system. Students can sign up, join the appropriate “loop” (like Mr. Hoefler’s AP 12 Class), and then I can send them a brief message. Students can choose to have these delivered to their phone, email, IM, or even their RSS reader. They can’t reply to the message or send one back to me, though. It’s just an alert system.

iTexter is a two-way group system. Students can sign up, join the appropriate group, and that group gets a number assigned to it (like 335566). Now, anyone in the group can send a text message to that number and everyone else will get the message. If a student then replies to that message, everyone else in the group gets the reply.

I know there are other, similar services out there, but these two seem to be the easiest. At this point, LoopNote looks like the better solution for what I need, though I can see how iTexter might suit other situations better. (For instance, when we take the publications students to New York City in March, it might be good if every student in the group could have one number to text that would let everyone else get the message.)

There will no doubt be some reservations from some people. I can imagine parents and students worrying about the privacy of their cell phone number or the extra cost messages might add to their cell bill. Even though most of my students have cell phones, not all do. In addition, my school has a strict no-cell-phone policy: students cannot have them on or visible during school hours. (Of course, since I’m concerned mainly with passing on announcements and reminders after school, this isn’t really an issue).

I’ve posed this question to my students on the site blog and posted a survey for them to complete. I’m interested to hear their responses.

I know this is just the tip of the mobile-learning iceberg, but we all have to start somewhere. Do you have any experience with a similar service or setup? Do you have arguments for or against this idea? Do you think the one-way (LoopNote) or two-way (iTexter) version is better? Do you know of other services that would be better for this purpose?