After reading, “Thumbs Race as Japan’s Best Sellers Go Cellular,” I know about a new genre of literature called the cell phone novel. Not surprisingly when you think about it, young people across Japan are using their commute time to tap away at best selling novels on their cell phones.

After reading this , I began thinking about cell phones as teaching and learning tools. Today generally children love their cell phones, so how can we get children to use cell phones in a manner that might help build their literacy skills?! Some ideas are as follows:

1) If students type their own cell phone novels. Make sure to okay this with parents in advance!

2)If students make a photo documentary using the camera function on their cell phones. They can upload them to sites such as Flickr and type narrative descriptions for each picture to share with classmates, family and friends.

3) If students create educational podcasts with their cell phones (or home phones) using free services like Gabcast that allow users to record podcasts using their phones. The podcasts can then be uploaded to blogs or other multimedia sites to share.