Sunday, January 11, 2009

Fully Integrated Mobile Blogs are Easy for Teachers with MoFuse!

In the past I have posted about a resource called Feedm8, where you can make anything with an RSS feed into a legible mobile website. Feedm8 does this by giving the site a mobile address. While I do like Feedm8, I have taken another look at a free site called MoFuse. Similar to Feedm8, converts any blog into a website that is viewable on any cell phone with Internet service. My mobile address for this site is http://cellphonesinlearning.mofuse.mobi (feel free to try it out on your phone).

While I do like having the easy mobile web address that is automatically updated as I update my web-based blog, MoFuse also has a wide variety of other options for mobile websites. Here are a few...
1) Analytic
Tracking the number of viewers, subscribers, devices used to access the mobile page. It looks and works just like Google Analytics, but for mobile sites. You can even add chicklets to show your mobile subscribers.

2) QRcodes
MoFuse automatically creates a QRcode for your website.

3) iPhone Capability
MoFuse creates a mobile site that is viewable on iPhones as well as basic phones. All access!

4) Editing
MoFuse allows you to use their web-based editor to create new pages in your site, edit your homepage, add links...all of which will only show up on the mobile site and not your web-based blog site.

5) Business Options
MoFuse has an automatic "re-direct" option (which is something that I pay money to have for my web-based site). This allows anyone who has multiple mobile web addresses to have them all sent to one place.

6) Make Money
While schools are non-profit and not creating mobile websites to make big bucks, MoFuse does allow integration with Google Adsense if teachers/administrators find a viable reason to use it (fund raising anyone??).

7) Site Demographics
You can create keywords to drive mobile web-users to your site.

8) Privacy Options
Your site can be public or private. Great for schools to have these options.

9) Click to Call
I have not seen this option before, but I like it! You can create a link to call any number on your cell phone. For example I can put a link on the mobile page (from the MoFuse editor) that says "Call Me" and when clicked it will automatically dial the number. I see this integrating well with resouces such as Podlinez (where you can get a unique number for anything, and when it is called get more information----homework hotline???).


Classroom Integration Ideas
There are many more options on MoFuse than I have listed so it is worth checking out. I see many different ways that this resource could be integrated into classroom curricula. Here are a few short ideas...
1) Journalism
Publish the school web-based newspaper on mobile phones and track subscribers. Sell Ads.
2) School Activities
Advertise the school musical, sell tickets, and get up-to-date information.
3) Class web pages
Teachers could create the site and then put their students in charge of updating the mobile website. Parents could access information, sign up for classroom volunteering.
4) Business/Econ Classes
Create and advertise a product, track subscribers, hits, and even sell the product.

4 comments:

Coach Burk said...

In your post, you added .com for your mobile site, it gave me an error and if I just put cellphonesinlearning.mofuse.mobi it worked fine. Thank you for this neat idea, and I checked it out on my ipod touch.

Liz Kolb, Ph.D. said...

Thank you for letting me know Coach Burk, I have corrected the error.

Coach Burk said...

Liz I see the link has changed, but the text has not. If I am still just typing the address you gave into my iTouch or iPhone I would still get an error. Don't mean to be anal about it. I enjoy reading what you are doing and have shared even with my grade school.

Anonymous said...

Cool story you got here. It would be great to read a bit more about that matter. The only thing it would also be great to see here is some pics of such gadgets as gps blocker.

Disclaimers and Other Information about this blog. The information on the blog may be changed without notice and is not guaranteed to be complete, correct or up to date. The opinions expressed on the blog are the opinions of the individual author and may not reflect the opinions of anyone or any institution associated with the author. Links to external sources in the blog posts are provided solely as a courtesy to our blog visitors. All of the links on the sidebar under "recommended links" are links that the author believes to possibly have benefit in K-12 teaching and learning. All other sidebar links are related to cell phones and/or education but not necessary recommended as a K-12 learning resource by the author, some may be sponsor links and/or paid for image/banner ads. The author does not do paid reviews for her blog posts about web resources.Please contact Liz at elizkeren@yahoo.com for any inquires regarding this blog.
Creative Commons License Cell Phones in Learning by Liz Kolb is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License. Based on a work at cellphoneseinlearning.com. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://cellphonesinlearning.com.