How could a school do "Football results to mobile phone"?

Seeing Tess enthusing about Knox's win over 'The Mearns' at rugby this week has made me put finger to keyboard and suggest a new way to bring the community into the life of the school. Best of all, it encourages good use of the mobile phone without attracting any of the potential negative risks schools are, at the moment, very jumpy about.

Many Brits currently receive all their sports' scores - football, rugby, olympic news - via mobile phone and schools can now do the same for free. This is my contribution to the Twitter bubble.

Twitter allows loads of different ways to contribute small messages to 'mini blog'. You can upload messages through the Twitter website or via your phone. People can see what you've texted to the service by a dynamic badge on your blog or school website. They can also subscribe to the messages on their own mobile phone. This is where the potential for schools is great.

Parents could subscribe to different Twitter channels created by a school: Head Teacher's news, pupil of the week, announcements of meetings, sports news... Every time a new piece of news is released their mobile buzzes with the message. Alternatively, they could set it up on their work computer Internet Explorer, using the orange RSS button. If I were in a classroom I'd be seizing this to just send home great news on pupil progress (rules on identifying pupils remain - first names only, no class name given). For more whole-school issues such caution is less necessary as news would rarely cover any particular pupil.

Any takers? Anyone doing it already? I'd love to follow the uptake of such an initiative.

Comments

[Chris]

Cheers Ewan,

this looks like a fantastic service / idea! Thank you for putting us on to it.

So is it possible to select who you want the updates to go to? Ie specific parents? Also, how would you go about getting parents involved?

Cheers,

Chris

[Ewan McIntosh]

You can't decide who is/is not allowed to get the information and I can't imagine a use for the information a school would give out this way that would be private.

I'd get parents involved with a simple letter home, mentions in school newsletters etc. Maybe a tutorial could be provided on the school website.