There has been a lot of controversy about if mobile devices, whether in college lecture halls or elementary schools, are a distraction to students. GoSoapBox, an educational app, aims to show how mobile devices can help keep classes on track and help both students and teachers be more successful in the classroom.

GoSoapBox is a Web-based app that serves as a classroom discussion back-channel. Students can use it to post questions about a lecture, set their statuses to "confused," and contribute to polls and questions posted by the teacher. GoSoupBox falls into a small category of education apps that appear to work successfully for an average classroom.

All of the behaviors on the app such as indicating confusion and responding to questions are natural in classrooms. The new technology will make it less disruptive and less intimidating for everyone to participate, while providing teachers with instant feedback.

"With the app, students are less likely to get distracted because they’re staying engaged with the material. The questions they have are getting answered," said GoSoupBox co-founder and CEO John Pytel, on GoSoupBox.com.  “The hours that students spend in the classroom are some of the most valuable hours of their lives. I’m building GoSoupBox to help students extract as much value out of those hours as possible.”

Students don't need to create accounts or coordinate technology to use GoSoapBox. They simply type in a short code to whatever device they happen to be carrying.

To use the service, teachers pay $15 per month or $90 per year, and 1,300 of them have already enrolled in the free beta program. Teachers do not have to make disruptive changes to their lesson plans in order to accommodate the new technology.

Additionally, a 2009 survey shows that GoSoupBox is probably not going to benefit all educational settings. Blackboard (News - Alert) and Project Tomorrow found that about 31 percent of ninth to 12th-grade students had smartphones with Internet access. At universities, however, many students do have access to browsers during class time. This innovative app provides a way for them to use mobile devices to interact in class rather than distract themselves from it.