Smartphone education

Alex Tabarrok, co-creator of online Marginal Revolution University, reports on something that offline courses might consider using. New Teaching Tools

Instead of prohibiting smart phones in class, we require them …We then automatically deliver to their device a difficult conceptual question. We then give students a few minutes without discussion to reflect on the question and to indicate their answer on their device.
…Next, our system automatically puts students into groups of 2–5 [the system tells the students which other students to talk with and where to move in the classroom to find their group...

It's easy to think of lots of variations on the idea, but this is a version that does seem to be working. It appeals to me in part because it works via using new tech to facilitate a very very old tech: the study group, and I suspect that this is crucial; the teach-yourself books and teaching machines of decades past might have done much better if they hadn't focused so much on the (already) independent learner.
Or then again, maybe not.