As we commented in previous articles, having your students use their cellphone in the classroom can be a powerful tool for engagement and collaboration. But not all activities made with smartphones are useful for learning. We have selected 4 activities that your students will love, and they won’t even notice that they are learning in the process.

1.- Search contest

Have your students use their phones to make quick searches on their search engine of choice, in order to answer your questions. You can make a more competitive activity by turning it into a contest, where the winner or winners get a reward, like a symbolic trophy or a badge.

2.- QR treasure hunt

Whenever you can take your students outdoors, you can plan a scavenger hunt where you place several posters within a limited space, all of them with QR codes to read. Every QR code has to be scanned by your students: it can contain a link to an image, a web page, a post in the classroom blog, etc. All students must collect all QR codes and discuss what they learned afterwards.

3.- Performing plays in class

Have your students read a piece of literature in class, and perform a specific scene from it in front of the other students, while the rest take pictures. You can also assign them to make a summary of the pictures they’ve taken, explaining what was happening at that exact moment of the play.

4.- Listening voice notes

This activity is especially useful when teaching other languages: send all your students a voice note, recorded by you or any native speaker of the language you teach. This will make your students used to hearing others speak this language, and listening to it via a digital device will make the task more challenging. After hearing it, send your students a set of questions related to the voice note, to make sure they’ve understood its content.