Yes, using smartphones can be part of a lesson. In fact, today's post is about a wonderful smartphone app that has the potential to be a huge help during teaching: Socrative.
Well, it's more like 2 apps to be exact: Socrative Teacher is where the teacher can manage exercises and Socrative Student is where the students can access these exercises.
As teachers can choose from various forms of exercises, it can be fitting to any class' lesson where students are comfortable using a tablet or their smart phones if they have one.
There are exercises great to start with, like a quick truth or false or a multiply choice quiz. Some can also be used as an energiser or refresher, for example the playful space racing game. While an exit ticket is an obvious choice for ending the lesson -- and also very informative to all parties!
This app is great (even the unpaid version!!), and to show that, let me introduce you to how I'd use it in the beginning of a literature class about Pride and Prejudice for a class of 14-16-year-olds:
The teacher writes in the question in Socrative Teacher
2) Students can send in their original answers even more than one if the teacher sets the settings like that:) --- this happens in Socrative Student of course
3) Theacher gets the answers in Socrative Teacher
4) Now the teacher can opt to start a vote. I would do it after talking a bit about the answers with the students (5 minutes), it would be interesting to see how opinions might have changes after hearing the others' arguments.
(This is how it looks to the teacher when nobody has voted yet:)
