Happy New Year everyone. What better way to start the new year than friends, family, football and a little dose of reality? Let me explain…
Most people in education understand or are starting to understand the fact that young people (you know, students) are using email less and less all the time. Everybody realizes that students prefer text messaging to email by a wide margin. No argument there, right? What…there are still a few disbelievers? Without going into great detail about this, let me toss some data at you…
A recent study, “Teens and Social Media”, conducted by the Pew Internet & American Life Project states:
“Despite the power that email holds among adults as a major mode of personal and professional communication, it is not a particularly important part of the communication arsenal of today’s teens. Only 14% of all teens report sending emails to their friends every day, making it the least popular form of daily social communication on the list we queried.”
Note that there are lots of other studies and surveys that show the same findings, but I think this is enough for the moment. Now that we’re all on the same page about the decline of email and the meteoric rise of text messaging, let’s turn our attention to a related topic - social networks. We all know social networks are incredibly popular, but I’ve had some discussions recently that are a bit troubling. They’ve gone something like this:
Me: It’s amazing how seldom students use email these days. Friend: Yes, it really is amazing. Now, students just use Facebook and MySpace to talk with each other. Me: Well, they do spend a lot of “time” on social networking sites like Facebook, but that’s still not the main way they communicate. If they’ve got a mobile phone, that’s their #1 way to communicate. It’s their lifeline. Friend: No way…it’s all about Facebook and MySpace. MySpace and Facebook. Me: Well, “time on site” doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the way they communicate with each other, so that’s not completely accurate Friend: Uh, yes it is. Me: Uh, no it’s not. You get the picture…
Fortunately, we can return to our trusty data from the same Pew study which rank ordered teen daily social communication choices (i.e., the most popular methods of communicating with friends every day). For teens that use the internet and have mobile phones, the order, form most used/popular to least is…
1. Cell phone (talking)
2. Landline (talking)
3. Texting (text messaging)
4. Instant Messaging
5. Face to face
6. Social Networks
7. Email
Like my friend above, many people (including people at schools) I talk with believe that students use Facebook as their primary means of communication, and that if you want to reach them, you have to use Facebook. This study shows otherwise. The fact is, the mobile phone is the way students communicate….period. Although students spend a lot of time on Facebook and other social networking sites, they USE their mobile phone and send text messages more frequently to communicate. An analogy - teens living with their parents. They may spend a lot of time at home, but are they interacting and communicating with their parents all that time? Probably not. More likely they’re in their rooms, doors shut, texting, listening to music, etc. It’s the same with social networks versus mobile phones.
So, our beginning of the year reality check - if you really want to communicate with students, you can’t just go to where they hang out and expect to connect with them. If you want to communicate with them, use the tools they use everyday to communicate. Send a text! Better yet, send lots of text messages using clearTXT. Happy New Year. 8^)
A couple of weeks ago I made my way to the west coast and sat down with prolific video blogger, Robert Scoble. We had a great time talking about clearTXT, educational technology, and technology in general. You can see the interview below. We’ll also have a briefer version online soon. Enjoy.
I had a great time meeting with Robert Scoble today. In case you’re not familiar with Robert, he’s a prolific blogger (online, video), author, and more…plus a really good guy. You can check out his show (the Scoble Show) on Pod Tech (www.podtech.net).
After our interview he put a post on his blog that includes a preview of their new studio…along with a quick hello from your’s truly. He shot this using his phone, then instantly uploaded it to Kyte.tv for the entire world to see. Amazing! It’s a good time to alive. You can check it out here.
We’re getting ready to head up to Boston for the BbWorld ‘07 Users Conference. Not only are we exhibiting (booth #209), but we’re also partnering with Blackboard to provide mobile conference notifications and updates (as mentioned in a previous post). If you haven’t signed up yet, you can sign up here
If you going to the conference, please drop by our booth to say hi and meet the team. And just for being a loyal reader of the CEO blog, if you mention reading this post, we’ll give you one of our world famous clearTXT T-Shirts!. See you there.
In case you missed the announcement on the company blog, clearTXT will be Blackboard’s exclusive partner and provider of mobile alerts for Bb Word ’07 in July. This is the best way for attendees to get reminders when presentations are getting ready to start, when schedule or room changes occur, and everything else happening at the conference.
We’re really excited to provide the service for a second time, and also that Blackboard is putting some muscle behind the service this year. The first time we offered the service was the 2005 Bb User Conference in Baltimore, MD. Blackboard was excited about us providing the service, but left most of the marketing and promotion up to us. We had a lot of people sign up, but Blackboard’s marketing efforts will probably result in many more subscribers this year. Blackboard’s a great partner and certainly knows how to market, so this should be a great event.
We received a lot of feedback in 2005, almost all of it positive. In general, people liked the reminders and the schedule updates the most. Reminders were sent to people 5 minutes prior to events starting with the event information, such as room location, title of the event, etc. With so much happening during the conference it’s easy to get distracted and lose track of time. The reminders ensured that people didn’t miss the events they were most interested in attending.
The schedule changes have obvious value - you certainly want to know if a presentation you’re on your way to see has been moved to a different location, the time has changed, etc. This year, we hope to add some other types of messages and make this a truly valuable service to attendees.
We’ll have more information, as well as the signup page, available soon. I hope everyone will sign up.
A long time ago (at least in Internet time - you know, like 10 years ago), when people used the terms “mobile” or “mobility”, they were referring to laptop computers. More recently, mobility has become synonymous with mobile phone. Google the term “mobile” and 7 of the top 10 results are related to mobile phones.
Here at clearTXT, we love mobile phones…as you can imagine. However, we view mobile a little differently than other companies (differently than most people, I suspect). To us, mobility is not just about the mobile phone — it’s about the freedom to be connected with your information, groups, and peers no matter where you go or what device you carry.
I’m not talking about the ability to logon with some device and “go get” your information (i.e., on demand), but rather, the things you say are important to you are delivered to you wherever you are…period.
In the coming days, weeks, and months, I’ll write more about this concept and discuss how this concept relates to clearTXT. With the upcoming release of our newest product, I thought it was time to get the conversation started.
I’ll be speaking at the 2007 Teaching and Learning with Technology Conference tomorrow in Raleigh, NC. Yes, I know this is incredibly last minute, but I do have my reasons…not the least of which is we just moved this blog onto a brand new server and it was down during the migration. Here’s some info about the presentation…
TITLE: E-mail Is Dead? What’s A Teacher to Do?”
DESCRIPTION: By now you’ve read the stories ¬ e-mail is OUT and text messaging is IN. There are now more than 200 million mobile phone owners in the US who send more than 12 billion text messages a month (yes, that¹s billion, with a “b”). What, you don’t send and receive text messages? Your students sure do—a lot! Many students check their email just once a week, but send thousands of text messages every month. If you want to reach your students, you need to reach them on their mobile phones. This presentation will introduce you to clearTXT, the easiest and most effective system for communicating with your students and delivering alerts, announcements, assignments, and other information right to their mobile phones.
The presentation is at 5:30. Hope to see you there
Each year, Tom McBride and Ron Nief from Beloit College in Wisconsin release the Beloit College Mindset List. This list is not only interesting and informative, but it also provides a valuable look at “the cultural touchstones that have shaped the lives of today’s first-year students.�?
If you haven’t seen the 2006 list yet, I encourage you to take a few minutes and have a look. McBride summarizes the characteristics of this year’s incoming class as:
“a generation that has always been ‘connected’ and is used to things happening in ‘real time,’ like live satellite coverage of revolutions and wars, instant messaging and movies on demand. They expect solutions for every problem, from baldness to diseased organs. To the chagrin of teachers and parents, they’ve developed their own generational means of communication.�?
This description, and a review of the list, illustrates the dramatic changes in the ways in which students communicate. Most notably:
#8. They are wireless, yet always connected.
# 20. Text messaging is their email.
This certainly isn’t the first time we’ve read about the rise of connectivity and text messaging—evidence of this seems to be everywhere these days. What the findings do provide is a “reality check�? –- each year, students gets more connected and more mobile, and we better deal with it.
As the trend continues, it’ll be very interesting to see how much of their lives (academic and social) get integrated into their mobile lifestyles. One thing’s for sure – 2007 is going to be interesting!
Since starting clearTXT a few years ago, I’ve attended quite a few conferences and events. At each conference I spoke with people about a wide range of mobile-related topics, including text messaging, how mobility can be used in the academic setting, and location based services. Early on, my discussions seemed more like sermons – I espoused the values of receiving highly targeted information on your phone that you had requested. Most people listened politely, but didn’t seem to truly “get it?. After all, a few years ago, few people in the US had ever sent or received a text message.
But as the song goes, the times, they are a changing. Over the last few years, the mobile market in the education space evolved quite a bit. Let’s take a look at some of the evolution…
Stage 1: “What is it??
I introduced clearTXT to the market at the Blackboard Users Conference in 2004, and planned to spend my time telling people how clearTXT uses mobile phones and text messaging to benefit teachers and students. Naivety at it’s finest. Unfortunately, since most people didn’t even know what a text message was – and most insisted their phones weren’t capable of receiving text messages. So, I spent most of my time educating people about the basics of text messaging, and answering the question, “what is it?? As you can imagine, it didn’t seem like the ideal time to be selling a text messaging system to schools.
Stage 2: “I know what it is, but why should I care??
2005 was a little different. I spent very little time explaining the concept of text messaging. Thanks mainly to American Idol (did I actually just thank American Idol?), most people understand the concept of text messaging. Unfortunately, most people still didn’t see the value for themselves or their schools. Still not a great time to be selling text messaging to the education market, but at least they had moved to the next stage.
Stage 3: “We need to do something, but I don’t know what?
A few weeks ago I was at the Educause 2006 Conference in Dallas, but I might as well have been in another world at another time. Mobility was a hot topic throughout the conference. People were actually talking about mobile phones, text messaging, and the…dare I say it…?need? to connect with students using mobile technologies.
All of this brought back fond memories of my early days at Blackboard (circa 1999), when people acknowledged the growth of the internet, but didn’t yet understand its potential. At that point, the question changed from “should we do something with this internet thing? to “this thing is becoming important, so what should we do with it?.
Now that 90-95% of all college students own mobile phones, and more than 5 billion text messages sent every month in the US alone, it seems like 1998 all over again. And just like 1998 and the internet, there’s no denying that mobile is not only relevant, very important.
Stage 4: “We need it!?
What will the coming months bring? If history continues to repeat itself, mobility is poised to become a core component of education technology. It won’t be a “nice? thing to have…it won’t be a “want?… it won’t just be a differentiator for schools…it will be a “need?.
Schools will need to have a strategy for integrating mobile into the very fabric of the campus community. In the classroom, the library, the gym, the quad….like Blackboard, WebCT, and the Internet, students will expect to receive their class announcements, schedules, grades, and just about every other bit of information on their mobile phones. Students are already mobile. They’re just waiting for schools to get onboard.
