April 17, 2008 - 0 Comment(s)
We just released a case study with University of San Diego Toreros. 35% increase in student attendance?! You go Toreros!
You can see the case study by clicking here.
November 28, 2007 - 0 Comment(s)
For the last couple of years I’ve heard many people say (and read in many articles) that 120 characters is too limited a space to say anything meaningful. In most cases, people are talking/writing about the limits of 120 characters in relation to an emergency situations - when critical information needs to be conveyed.
I agree that 120 characters is limited, but I think many people don’t really know what 120 characters “looks” like. Let’s see a few example…all of these are no more than 120 characters…
“Some people say that 120 characters is too small a space to say anything meaningful. I disagree. this is 120 characters.”
“All classes canceled today. We’ll resume our normal schedule tomorrow. For further info, log on to the school website.”
“Security alert. Shots fired on East Campus. Please stay in your current location and lock all doors. More info shortly.”
As you can see, you can actually get a decent amount of information across in 120 characters. And as more organizations increase their baseline limit to 140 characters, there’s even more space.
Of course I wish that SMS wasn’t quite so limited (personally, I’d like to see about a 300 character limit), but I think there’s more room for information in that space than people acknowledge. It’s also important to remember that the limit is a benefit - it’s one of the reasons SMS is so fast and is definitely one of the aspects that makes it so appealing to so many people (young people in particular). It forces sender to get to the point immediately and not send unnecessary information. And who says you (read “schools”) can only send one message? If the messages are important and relevant, are people going to be upset about receiving two messages? Given the volume of messages college students send and receive every day, I hardly think this is a problem.
Is 120 characters limiting? Yes. Is it “too” limiting? I don’t think so. After all, do you want all your messages to be as long as this post?
November 14, 2007 - 0 Comment(s)
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.
April 16, 2007 - 0 Comment(s)
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.
