The Limitations of Blogs and Smart Phones

One of my main responsibilities as Project Manager with the Purdy Crawford Chair in Aboriginal Business Studies at Cape Breton University to administer the Business Network for Aboriginal Youth. This is a mentorship program recently launched to try to increase the amount of interest in the study of business at university with Aboriginal high school students across Nova Scotia.

Currently, we have 30 students, representing 19 high school and 12 First Nation communities from one end of Nova Scotia to the other.  This program involves 2 face to face youth conferences. However, the day to day interaction occurs via various social media vehicles using BlackBerry technology. Bell Mobility has donated a BlackBerry for each student (30), and each mentor (10) in the program.

Students are in groups of 5 based on their areas of interest relating to business. In their groups they are responsible to complete a challenge every 2 weeks.  Each challenge integrates business related topics and social media.  2 of the 6 groups were asked to view their challenge (assignment) on my WordPress blog and submit for this challenge in the form of a reply. Some of these students do not have a computer at home, which means I have to make sure that each of the challenges can be completed entirely using their BlackBerry.  With WordPress, in order for students to respond, they had to create their own WordPress account and WordPress Blog, which proved very difficult using the BlackBerry.  Students were able to get it done, but it took extensively longer to create this account and respond to posts.  Some BlackBerry apps are very easy to use - this is not one of them!

This was not significantly related to AT, but when we started using Blogger, I thought it would be fitting to tell this story.  I don't own and Iphone, but I suspect that WordPress for IPhone would be much easier to use!