Cell Phone as a Scanner...

A web2.0 resource called ScanR allows you to take pictures with your cell phone (or other mobile devices) and store them online or sent directly to email as pdf files. One nice aspect of this resource is that you can have multiple cell phone numbers sending scans to the same account. This is useful for educators who may want students to "scan" work or documents and send them to the "teacher" account. Students working collaboratively in groups can also great "group" ScanR accounts to store their research data. Students or teachers can scan in white boards, documents, or images. It is a nice that you can scan and create a pdf immediately. While I am still trying to think of some engaging learning activities with this application, one issue I ran across while using ScanR was that you have to have a decent quality camera on your cell phone. The resolution needs to be at least 1100 x 800, which some less expensive cell phones do not have. In addition, keep in mind that scans are "text messages" so there could be a cost to sending scans to the ScanR account.