Would you like to play a Cell Phone review game?

One of the most popular ways to review material in classrooms today is to use a jeopardy type game. When I started teaching I would use an overhead and have student's raise their hands when they knew the answer. There was always some confusion over who had their hand up first. One simple solution to this is the cell phone. On the mLearning-world.com blog, they suggest using cell phones as game "buzzers" and using Microsoft applications to help collect and store data. Similar to a CPS (classroom performance system) only it does not really cost anything if student's already have their own cell phones. If not all of your student's have a cell phones, then you can put them into groups (one cell per group). It might be a fun way to play an old review game.

You could even take this one step further and the teacher could text message a review question every so often (for example over spring break) to all the student's cell phones. The first student to text back or call in the correct answer wins (extra credit or something fun)! The students may enjoy the spontaneous review questions and look forward to them. It might be a nice way to keep student's thinking about content when they are outside of the classroom. Teachers could even put a student or groups of students in charge of sending out questions for each unit, they might enjoy it and it will allow them opportunities to synthesize the data or content information.