Awesome Fun with a Bluetooth File Server

Today during my senior Outdoor & Environmental Studies class we begun looking at the different motivations or reasons people choose to participate within outdoor experiences in natural environments. This part of the course is usually quite exciting as it lets the students share their own experiences. Anyway I’ve been looking for a genuine reason to utilise a Blue tooth server within the classroom and today was always going to be a great opportunity, here’s how it happened.

1. I downloaded and installed the Bluetooth Server/Marketing software called ‘BlueMagnet’
2. Using a creative commons picture search engine  I found 20 pictures of different Natural environment user groups and saved them within a folder on my computer.
3. I ran the Bluemagnet software and setup a  ‘campaign’ that would randomly send the 20 pictures to devices as they became discoverable.
4. I then wrote up the questions that the students needed to answer for each picture on the board, which was “What do you think motivates the person/people in your picture to participate in the outdoors?”
5. I then ran the ‘Campaign’ from my computer and all of a sudden all 11 students had received a  random image that they then had to write about within their workbooks.
6. We then continued this process 3 times, with excellent discussion occurring between people in the class about what picture they received and what they thought the main motivations would likely to be. Perfect.

Some people may say that I could have simply handed out printouts of the pictures to the students, which is true as it would have done the same thing, however I can guarantee the engagement levels of this activity would far exceed its more traditional alternative. The bottom line is my students simply loved it and to prove this even further some of them wound up saving some of the images on their phones as wallpapers. Overall it worked incredibly well and I look forward to trying it out again in the future. Next time Ill be sending MP3 or video files in the same manner, now that will be awesome.