Get Learners Moving With Mobile Devices

“Learning is not the product of teaching. Learning is the product of the activity of learners.” – John Holt

Unlike many other technologies, mobile devices can support physical health along with learning. With a mobile device students can create, problem solve, critical think, and engage with the world around them. With the right activities, teachers can get learners out of their desks observing and learning about their surroundings and engaging with realia. In my digital book, Learning to Go, you’ll find rubrics, handouts, and lesson plans for some of the activities listed below. Check out my slide presentation (download for free) and the bookmarks below to discover apps and resources to get your students moving with their devices. For more great resources, check out my previous post, Pair Activities with Mobile Devices.

Get your copy of The 30 Goals for Teachers and Learning to Go.

Active Learning with Mobile Devices from Shelly Sanchez Terrell

Get students to try gesture based apps, like CamMe, a camera which takes pictures with your hand signal.
If you can afford a few Google Cardboards, you can get students moving with virtual reality.
Get students moving with augmented reality. Apps like AR Soccer require students to work in pairs to kick a virtual ball.
If your budget can afford it, get students moving with Apple Watches or other wearable technologies.
Play I Spy which is in my book Learning to Go! Students take close-up images representing geometric shapes, fractions, etc.
Give learners tasks, which involve the use of senses to problem solve and make observations.
Students can conduct field research and document their observations in a log! In Learning to Go you will find templates for observation logs.
These free apps are my favorite for observation journals- ProjectNoah.org (iOS/Android), Zydeco Inquiry (iOS), BioKIDS (iOS), and Evernote (Web/iOS/Android). Discover more research apps here!
Create your own scavenger hunts to get students learning around the school or during field trips with the KlikaKlue app, Goose Hunt app (iOS/Android), QRWild, or the Treasure Hunt.
Integrate QR codes.You and your learners can create and scan QR codes with Quickmark (Web/iOS/Android).Put the QR codes on objects to get students out of their desks moving and engaging with objects.The PE Geek has a wonderful video with his learners scanning a skeleton with QR codes. QR codes can connect to interactives, polls, text, links, audio, video, or a Padlet.
Give photo missions or challenges. Try any of these image editing apps- Instagram, Pixlr, BeFunky, Pic-Collage, ImageChef, CamMe, You Doodle, EduBuncee, Canva, Friendstrip, Pic Arts, Frame Artist, Muzy, or Photo Editor by Aviary.
Students can take photos to go into their digital scrapbooks. Students can create the following digital books with Google Slides, Book Creator, Edubuncee, Canva, Tackk, or EduGlogster– a rock collection, a nature book, bug identification, or tree identification.
Students can create short films, public service announcements, or trailers. For resources click here.
Plastic bags protect mobile devices from getting wet and dirty.

Challenge: Get students to move with their mobile devices.

If you enjoyed these ideas, you may want to get your copy of The 30 Goals for Teachers or my $5.99 ebook, Learning to Go, which has digital/mobile activities for any device and editable/printable handouts and rubrics.