Celly is a program that allows you to create a channel for your students using SMS. You can even moderate the messages between students. You can send out reminders and other information. Students will submit to follow your "channel" and when a message is sent to that "channel" they will get it. For more information, watch the video below. For more information about using it in school, check out the
Celly Schools Page
Interesting idea, but it's odd that the site contains no meaningful contact information about the company, just a PO box in Portland, OR. Likewise for the domain registration. Maybe I'm just paranoid, but I'd like to know more about exactly who's collecting phone numbers and text messages from children before I go using this service.
ReplyDeleteThanks for investigating the site further. Normally I like to look into sites more, but was in a hurry and wanted to pass it a long and allow for other to explore the site. I have to agree with you...especially since I can just use email and set up groups to SMS students if necessary.
ReplyDeleteWith a little Google-fu, I found the people behind Cel.ly:
ReplyDeleteRussell Okomoto
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/russell-okamoto/12/7a2/120
Greg Passmore
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/greg-passmore/30/62b/986
Both interesting, very techy people as far as I can tell, with patents and everything. Why they're not publicly taking credit for Celly I have no idea.
Hi, this is Greg from Celly. Thanks for blogging about us!
ReplyDeleteSorry about the confusion about "who we are"! We were still at our day jobs when we launched the service and were trying to be careful about our identities. I can understand it looks a bit funny now. We will get this updated soon. Yes you found us, quite good googling skills there :)
By the way, there are a couple reasons why Celly works better than Email->SMS . For one, the email to SMS connectivity is very unreliable, especially if you want two way communication. Also, with Celly, you don't need to know your students phone number, and vice versa, which is a requirement we have heard from lots of teachers. We also have a lot of features like a web console, moderated chat, easy blocking and muting, these all make Celly well suited to the classroom. We are also looking at introducing some learning games and ways to give back to the schools that participate (including revenue sharing).
Thanks again for blogging. We are creating an educators mailing list to ensure we hone Celly for education, email me if you are interested in joining at support at cel.ly.
Thanks for the clarification and providing more valuable information about your Celly. Good to see innovation with education in mind.
ReplyDelete