The Power of Words (With Friends)

If you haven't been swept up in the Words with Friends phenomenon over the past couple of years then I have one question for you: where have you been?

Words With Friends is a totally addictive, Scrabble-like game played back and forth between smart phones like the iPhone and the Droid. The game combines game play and social media for an app that must have sold a zillion units by now. Practically everyone I know with an iPhone plays Words With Friends with someone. If you don't have it, get it.

Last school year, I started playing Words with some of my current and former faculty. We had a great time going back and forth with the word game. Then something interesting happened. I started hearing about some kids at school who also played Words and wanted some tougher competition than their other friends. One by one, initially, they'd find me in the halls and ask for my Words With Friends screen name. Next thing I know, I have about fifteen games going at any one time with my students. This actually created a great opportunity to start some conversation with some of the students, some of whom I really didn't know all that well. It gave me a chance to say some positive and encouraging things to a few kids I barely knew both through the chat function on the app and in person in the halls.

While I have many I could share, the most amazing anecdotes I have for you involve a kid who otherwise had been a complete introvert for months and a kid who later in the year would suffer a tragedy.

The introvert: I could hardly get her to say "Hi" in the halls when we passed. Nevertheless, she got my screen name from one of her friends and she sent an invitation for a new game. I accepted and we proceeded to play about fifty consecutive games against one another over the next few months. Using the chat function, we started with simple exchanges of "good word" or "rematch!" or even "Merry Christmas." Then, the girl who wouldn't say a word in person in the halls before suddenly opened up and began to speak at school. "Nice game" or "crazy word yesterday" or "I'm gonna beat you next time" eventually turned into actual conversation. Amazing!

The tragedy: Another student I hardly knew sent me an invitation for a new game about the same time as the introvert. I accepted and we also got to know each other a little at a time, first via chat, then small talk in then halls, then actual conversations. Fast forward a few months and this delightful kid learned that her father had suddenly passed away. She received the news at school. In my office. Had we not forged a relationship over the previous few months, a relationship that began with a friendly game of Words With Friends, that unforgettable day would have been much worse, much more uncomfortable. As she will tell you now, the experience was awful but at least there was a friendly face in my office that day when she most needed one.

I understand completely that playing social media word games with students and faculty will appear in no handbook for administrators or teachers, except perhaps under the "don't do this" section. However, this simple game app has been a powerful tool for me at my school with my students. I'm not necessarily advocating this method for anyone else. I'm simply giving testimony about the power of a unique way I discovered to connect with Digital Natives in the 21st century.

The Blackboard App for iPhone: A Great Tool for Digital Natives

For those of you who still think cell phones have no future in educational settings, you need to pay very close attention. Schools and institutions of higher learning across the country use a school data management and course delivery system called Blackboard. In case you're not familiar with Blackboard, this robust system allows teachers to post assignments, grades, documents, discussion boards and anything else associated with a course and it allows students to check grades, assignments, download documents, participate in discussions, upload assignments and more. It's expensive but Blackboard is a powerful tool.

Being savvy about today's rapidly-changing digital landscape that is education, Blackboard has created an app for iPhone (if you don't what an iPhone app is, click here) to allow students to use Blackboard from their iPhones. Check out this video for more info on the app.



This is going to be a runaway hit with high school and college students (and probably with more middle school kids than we want to admit actually have iPhones). Why is this going to be a hit? Watch and listen:



This may very well be one of the next big things in uses for cell phones in an educational setting. If you don't believe me, just wait.

How Digital Immigrants Weathered the Storm Called Gustav

Keeping Up with Digital Natives - Part III
How Digital Immigrants Weathered the Storm Called Gustav 

This is the third installment of my series on digital natives and how we can meet their needs in the classroom (although this impromptu post has less to do with the classroom and more to do with how educational leaders can learn a lesson from our digital native students).

When I began this series on digital natives, I had no plans for this post.  Gustav, however, changed that.  My school is in Baton Rouge and, unless you have been living in an information vacuum, you know that Hurricane Gustav pounded Baton Rouge on September 1.  Almost a week later, tens of thousands of households (in East Baton Rouge Parish alone) remain without electricity.  Gustav severely crippled Baton Rouge and much of South Louisiana. 

As Gustav roared through Baton Rouge, the power for virtually the entire city went down.  As if that weren't bad enough, voice communications via phones went down as many telephone lines went down with the power lines.  With no power and no phones, communications in Baton Rouge and the surrounding area almost ceased to exist.  To further complicate matters, cell phone service was spotty at best.  Those cell channels that remained in service were overloaded with both incoming and outgoing calls.  Baton Rouge also faced an email crisis because so many Baton Rouge residents use local email providers and the servers in town were without power.  Thus begins the case study about how Gustav forced a campus of digital immigrants to live as digital natives, at least for a little while.

As the division head for grades 9 through 12, my responsibility during a crisis such as Gustav is to gather and disseminate information as quickly and accurately as possible.  To do that, though, my headmaster and the other two division heads, along with several other key administrators, had to be on the same page regarding information sent to our stakeholders.  Additionally, nearly 50 faculty and staff, from my division alone, waited in the silent darkness for information regarding the restart of school. Without email or phone service (cell or land lines), we took a page from the digital native handbook: we used texts (SMS).

Text messages, or Short Message Service, worked when cell phone voice service and land line phone service often did not.  While cell phone calls travel over voice channels, texts travel in small data packets over control channels.  Because texts are so small, they usually do not overload the control channels and, therefore, texting often works when calls don't.

After the administration coordinated information and strategies via text messages, we transmitted information to our faculty and staff using texts.  Some of the texts we sent manually and some we sent via broadcasts created with software.  Once the faculty realized that texting worked even when calling did not, the texts began to fly through the airwaves over Baton Rouge like never before.  Faculty and staff not only received information from us but also relayed information and questions to us and to each other.  In the past week alone, I sent and received hundreds of texts (no exaggeration) all related to school business.  For the past week, I communicated with my entire division and essentially managed my faculty from my phone.  I should note, though, that communication of this kind would have been impossible had I not programmed my phone with the cell numbers of everyone in my division ahead of time.  Based on our success with SMS communication, I recommend that administrators be prepared to use SMS technology to communicate with faculty and other stakeholders in the event of a crisis such as Gustav.

Our digital native students would be proud of some members of our faculty who, quite honestly, may never have used texts despite owning cell phones for years.  Remember, while digital immigrants use cell phones primarily for talking, digital natives use cell phones primarily for texting.  If you don't believe me, ask a digital native.

BTW (that means "by the way" for all you digital immigrants out there), have you noticed that your texts are limited to 160 characters?  That number was decided on over twenty years ago and was based on 7-bit characters in the English language; 160 7-bit characters limits the messages to very small pieces of information.  If you were to text in Arabic, Russian, Chinese or several other languages whose characters are 16-bit characters, your texts would be limited to 70 characters.  I thought some of you would appreciate that bit of nearly-useless information.