The story of the frustrated student is the subject of a short video produced by students at Manchester Metropolitan University. The university is looking into alternative ways to communicate with students, specifically an SMS service in which messages are sent directly to students’ mobile phones.
The system is incredibly simple: staff post a message to the Virtual Learning Environment (VLE), and if the message is urgent, the staff member begins the message with the keyword ‘urgent’. The next 160 characters are then sent as an SMS. It’s an opt-in system which students value - not least because they are more likely to receive the messages if they go straight to their mobile device.
anonymous on 15 Jul 09Google have just released some new (but experimental) functionality for calendars. I'm not convinced that I would actually find most of them useful...apart, perhaps from the next meeting or who's free functionality. Apparently there's now an experimental (again) API for building one's own calendaring apps.
David Andrew on 15 Jul 09Who is is free is useful. The todo list tool is much better now
