Business & Economics Classes Can Go Mobile with Projects

Increasingly the business world has been including mobile marketing campaigns. For example, Little Caesars Pizza just ran a mobile marketing campaign where they asked people to text "Crazy" to 269411. H&M clothing stores are running a mobile marketing campaign that include slide shows of the latest clothing styles (link to the .mobi Swedish campaign site). This mobile campaign has a global reach, H&M's campaign spans 27 different countries! Another example is the fast food chain Jack in the Box. Jack in the Box has launched a mobile coupon option for it's customers. Jack in the Box smartly sends their coupons out at specific times a day to hit the lunch and dinner crowds.

How are companies delivering their coupons? One option is by using web resources such as Mobile Posse. Mobile Posse allows any mobile user to sign up for free coupons (while asking advertising to pay a small fee to allow Mobile Posse to distribute coupons at specific times on specific dates to their consumers who have signed up for free). When consumers receive their coupons on their cell phones they are given a special promotion code which they can use when they purchase the product.

How can Educators Simulate these Mobile Marketing Campaigns with their Students?
Economics, Social Studies, and Business Courses
Often students in economics or business classes are asked to simulate business campaigns; marketing, selling, and purchasing. Since mobile campaigns are part of the 21st century business world, it would be beneficial for students to develop their own mobile marketing campaigns. Below are a couple ways that secondary students could develop a mobile campaign...

1) Students can team up with local businesses and create mobile campaigns for them. Since most businesses do not currently have mobile marketing, this is a niche that the local middle or high schools could fill (for free!).

2) Students could create mobile campaigns for the school's activities. Such as marketing the pancake supper fundraiser for the volleyball team or marketing the Spring musical.

3) Students could develop their own product to sell and create a mobile campaign around their product.

4) Students could develop an activism campaign for a local non-profit organization.


What Tools Could They Use to Send Out the Mobile Marketing?
While most schools probably cannot afford to sign up with Mobile Posse to send out advertisements and marketing coupons, they could use other free web tools that couple with cell phones. Here are a couple ideas...
1) TxtBlaster
People can subscribe to the student's campaign with a simple SMS text message (and a Keyword). They will receive coupons and marketing information automatically when studnets send it from their TxtBlaster account. No pictures, but simple text messaging campaign.
2) TextMarks
People can subscribe to the student's campaign with a simple SMS text message (and a Keyword). They will receive coupons and marketing information automatically when studnets send it from their TextMarks account. No pictures, but simple text messaging campaign.
3) EveryWhereIGo
Students can create an entire mobile webiste devoted to the product. Automated text message coupons to customers.
4) Mofuse
Students can create an entire mobile webiste devoted to the product. In addition, MoFuse allows for tracking of hits to the site as well as easy additions (such as coupons of the week!). Also has QRcodes for each mobile website so customers can take a picture of the QRcode to get to the site (and use QRcodes as coupons).
5) Snappr
Students can use Snappr to create QRcodes as coupons or advertisements for the product/business.
6) Podlinez
Students can set up a unique phone number where people can call in and learn about a product, participate in a marketing sweepstakes, or even get a code for a coupon.

Mobile Phone Video Challenge...Film on the Fly

Yesterday I ran across a twitter post by Hall Davidson about a very interesting mobile phone video challenge sponsored by a local PBS station in California called Film on the Fly. On February 7th, 2009 the contest will send out a text message challenge (story) to anyone who signs up and ask them to create a mobile video of the topic in 20 hours or less! I myself cannot wait to participate and SEE the results! Of course this contest has me thinking about how classroom teachers could do this with their own students.

Since many students do not have camcorders in their cell phones, they could give a video or still photo option for the challenge. For example I could see a social studies teacher texting out part of a famous speech (such as "I have a dream") and asking their students to take pictures/video of things in the community that represent the major arguments or points in the speech. Students could take pictures of children of all races/creeds playing together to represent the "dream fulfilled" and at the same time could take pictures of signs that say "restricted" to represent the "unfulfilled dream".

The free resources that teachers could use to make this happen would include...
Storage Sites for the Media
drop.io to store all the media students collect. Since drop.io is password protected and can take all types of media it is perfect for this type of assignment.

Text Message Blast to Students
Sites such as txtBlaster, Textmarks, or Sendible would be great for creating an easy text message "blast" out to cell phones of the assignment.

Audio Blast to Students
If the teacher was worried about using text messaging because of potential charges on student's phones (although many do have unlimited text messaging now), they could use an audio blast with resources such as Dial2do or AbbyMe.

TXTBlaster...Create Keywords for Groups and Monitor Activity

Imagine being able to send text messages back and forth between yourself and your students, or yourself and your student's parents, or yourself and members of a committee. Imagine being able to have groups of students using text messages to communicate back and forth to each other about a class project and have it documented in one easy location for the teacher to monitor the group activity. Imagine students creating their own text messaging campaign, where they are the experts on a topic, and they can invite others to join in on their discussion through text messaging. All of this is possible with a resource called txtBlaster.

TxtBlaster is similar to Textmarks, it is a free, web-based resource that allows anyone to create a private or public group. Each group gets to create their own text messaging keyword, which they can give out to others to invite them to join the group. For example I just created a sample group with the texting keyword "kolb".
Therefore if you want to try it out...
Send a new text message from your cell phone
Send To: 25278
In Message: kolb

You should get a response from me and an option to join the group.

What I like about txtBlaster for education:
1) Private group options
2) No ads
3) Tracking of followers and group members
4) Sub-group options (so the teacher can create small subgroups of all her/his students when they are going group projects and monitor their texting activity from one account).
5) Lots of management options for control of the group
6) Database of all messages sent
7) Options for followers to send replies to group messages

Classroom Integration Ideas:
Texting brainstorming
Using the option to reply to the group or subgroups, students can brainstorm project ideas or homework readings outside of the classroom.

Texting Help Desk or Reference Line
Teachers can set up a text messaging help desk that could be run by former students who have already been successful with the curriculum. Media specialists could also run a reference desk through text messaging (similar to Southeastern Louisiana State Univ).

Text a Novel or Textbook
Since the text messages are collected in order of when they were sent, students could summarize a novel, write their own short novel, or collaborate on a textbook through text messaging with this tool.