Should Students Have Phones in the Classroom?

cell phone classHere’s an article on an apposite topic for our times by colleague and guest contributor Jane Alwis.

 

Educators and school administrators appear to be split over the use of cell phones in the class room and in fact many schools currently have a difficult fight on their hands to enforce a ban they have in place on students carrying their personal phones to classes. Despite school policies requiring students leave their phones at home or leave them in school lockers, many students still insist on carrying them in their pockets. Asking teens to go without their phone is like asking them to go without a limb. If I had been asked my opinion of students carrying phones to class a couple of years ago, my answer would have been a resounding ‘no’, however I am now an avid supporter of embracing the technology that my students embrace. The new cell phones are convenient, user friendly and can do most things that a computer can do. They also have the advantage of being highly portable. At this time with the growing number of cell phone providers offering unlimited data plans for relatively little money, the average teen is connected where-ever he/she goes. I am not advocating that students should be entitled to run around with their phones all day doing as they wish, however it seems to me that they are a tool that can be used for the benefit of our students if we are willing to learn their capabilities and educate our students in the proper use of the technology for educational purposes.

One of my students struggles with dysgraphia and has tracking issues that make copying notes from the board an overly strenuous task. In my class when he is laboring to copy the notes on the board, he has little energy to articulate the many ideas that he can contribute to the discussion. In some classes he is described as a non-contributor or non-participant, even though he will get handed a copy of the teacher’s notes. Unfortunately the teacher notes do not contain all the ideas that the class brain-stormed together that were recorded on the board. At the end of the discussion when the other students are writing down the ideas in their notebooks, ‘Max’ discreetly takes out his phone, takes a photo of the board and emails the photo to himself. He now has the same information as everyone else in the class and was able to concentrate on contributing ideas, in other words, he was actively engaged in the learning process. There are a myriad of other applications of this particular idea; I know of biology teachers who ask students to photograph living organisms for homework, and art teachers who ask students to photograph objects they are inspired by just to name a couple.
Another of my students is hopelessly disorganized. He suffers from, among other things, Executive Function Disorder and as such can never remember where he is supposed to be and what time he is supposed to be there. Since learning how to use the reminder feature on his phone, he has been on time for all of his appointments. His daily academic schedule, nightly homework assignments posted to the school website and weekly music, counseling and speech appointments are all contained in the device that he carries with him where-ever he goes as part of his teenage uniform. New technology is expensive, and in this time of constant cuts to education budgets “people are becoming more open to using student-owned mobile technology in schools” (Kolb, 2010).
The functions available on a standard smart phone today go well beyond the functions of the phones of previous generations. Speech to text functionality enables the user to do far more than send a hands-free text message whilst driving a car. Students are able to dictate writing assignments, classroom notes and reminders to themselves without the cumbersome and conspicuous computer and headphones required by computer software such as Dragon. This opens the educational doors for so many students who have in the past struggled with putting pen to paper to prove that they have understood the set assignment. Add to this the feature of Dropbox which enables the user to easily interact with all documents in one place without concern whether they were created on the phone or a computer and you now have situation where students can continue to work on an assignment just as easily at school, at home or anywhere in between. My colleague had all his students compose a 25 word story using their cell phones, take a photograph to accompany their writing and post it to the school blog. This exercise enabled all students to participate fully and enjoy the same learning opportunity in spite of their educational diagnosis or ELL status.
When we consider the free apps that can be accessed, the educational opportunities appear limitless. Online textbooks and text to speech reading of online documents afford students with reading disabilities the ability to access both curriculum and reference material when they need to. Translation apps assist English Language Learners access written information. Students can be placed in the role of on the spot journalists, film producers and bloggers. The synthesis skills required to produce a 6 second Vine about a class topic are arguably more developed than those required to write a much longer paper with added creativity. PollEverywhere allows teachers to ask questions and have students text their responses which are then shared via a power point presentation with the class. This can be particularly useful when reviewing material prior to testing or encouraging students who are nervous to contribute in a class setting. Using cell phone technology and “creating podcasts has been shown to increase motivation as well as students’ writing and listening skills, according to research by Ann Marie Dlott and Jeanne Halderson”(Malek, 2012).
Of course there are a number of valid arguments against the use of cell phones in schools. According to the Pew Teens and Technology Project, about 78 percent of teens and 91 percent of adults own a mobile phone (Madden, 2013), if this is still the case then we have to consider the 23percent of students without their own devices. George Forneo, school superintendent for District 113, outside of Chicago, whose school district supports the use of cell phones, states that although teachers are taking advantage of cell phone technology, “their use has also created worries about cheating, visiting inappropriate websites, sexting or overuse (Higgins, 2013). Karen Kolb argues that “the hardest part is making it acceptable to turn to technologies that aren’t traditionally used in schools (Varlas, 2010). There is also concern that existing school infrastructure cannot tolerate the extra demand on wifi networks, a situation that will hopefully be rectified by the ConnectED initiative announced by the Federal government which aims to connect 99 percent of schools around the country to broadband Internet(Higgins, 2012).
There are a number of countries where cell phone technology has been embraced in the classroom, New Zealand and Australia, predominately. In each school district where they are being used there is strong documentation to support that the most important task is teaching students to value their devices as educational tools and to monitor their use effectively. Kipp Rogers from Newport News, Va., says “ that when mobile devices meant for learning are misused, he’s careful to punish the action and not the technology” (Varlas, 2010). Kolb states that; “we have to get away from the mind-set that the tool is the problem, when really it’s what the students are thinking and doing that creates the problem” (Varlas, 2010). My own classroom rules are simple; your phone is used for educational purposes or it is put away. I have to admit that initially monitoring this was difficult; however students soon learned that access to their cell phones led to more engaging lessons. If they wanted to these lessons to continue then they quickly learned to do the right thing.

REFERENCES.

Higgins, J. 2013. More schools use cell phones as learning tools. USA Today. Retrieved July 17, 2014, http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/personal/2013/08/07/views-shift-on-cell-phones-in-schools/2607381/
Madden, M. 2013. Teens and technology. Retrieved July 17,2014,from Pew Research website: http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2013/Teens-and-Tech.aspx
Malek, P. 2012.Learning at your fingertips: Cell phones in the classroom. Retrieved July 17, 2014, from ASCD website: http://www.ascd.org/conferences/conference-daily/ac12/cell-phones.aspx
Varlas, L. Cell phones allow anytime learning- An interview with Liz Keren-Kolb. ASCD Express.vol 5, (18) http://www.ascd.org/ascd-express/vol5/518-varlas.aspx

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