USE OF CELL PHONES IN THE CLASSROOM! archived

What about texting answers to each other?

I am also horrified by this turn of events. It is a growing trend every where. My middle and hs kids don't have smartsphones and so can't participate in activities where they are told to pull out their smartphones to go to the internet. Recently, Saw Obama being interviewed about his girls and only Sasha has a phone which she is only allowed to use on weekends. I think that if they need online access during classes, put laptops or net books in the classrooms. Or give one to the teacher along a proxima projector.

managing technology to be useful in the classroom is a huge issue (its one I think this district fails miserably at)

more broadly, I'd be willing to bet within 5 years many textbooks will be electronic & within 10 years textbooks will cease to exist. Hard to fathom what the technology will be like then, but we need to begin thinking about that.

Its pathetic to see classrooms being run (relative to technology) - almost no differently than when I was in elementary school ~50 years ago.

Teachers that have white boards (mommydearest, proxima's are a thing of the past!), really seem to struggle to make them useful. Most of the publishers don't seem to have great interactive content that works with white boards. My son has a teacher (who also works as a consultant at the Apple store) -- and the teacher has identified online sources where teachers create apps, materials, etc. that really are interactive and engaging on the white board. This teacher enjoys this kind of stuff, but its a tremendous amount of time for him to actually prepare everything for class room use.

Its great to see this teacher teaching, see how he shows things, teaches using multimedia, then has the kids come up to the board to do the same.

In reality, how many teachers have the technical skills or understanding of the technology to do that?

In my work world, its painful to see people using Excel, for instance, really no differently than a word processor. Or using Powerpoint as a glorified typewriter. I'd say those who are closer to entering the work world vs retiring are more likely to be able to use technology and make things more efficient as a result, but that's a vast generalization. Probably no different among school teachers/ administrators.

There are many great resources for using smartphones in the classroom and if handled correctly by teachers they can really benefit Learning. A lot of the smartphones are more powerful and quicker then some of the computers we have in the schools. Students are allowed to use cell phones in my library for educational purposes and I teach kids how to use apps like Evernote and QR code scanners and poll everywhere.

When used correctly cell phones have some real benefits to Learning.

While this may change in the near future, most new 6th graders, and their parents, are struggling to find the balance of how cell phones are to be used. The general consensus from my experience was that the majority of 6th graders who had phones had low tech free versions without data plans. Even if the school provides free wifi, most smartphones require the purchase of a data plan.

As 8th grade ends, we know of several kids who've received iphones in the last year and I can go on my FB and see many kids who are "online" for FB chat during the day. We are considering an iphone now as she is due for an upgrade but I'm still concerned heading into 9th grade about the distraction that access to the internet provides 24/7.

Yes, I have no doubt that when cell phones are used correctly they have real benefit, but MS'ers are not always known for using things correctly or having developed the self control to moderate the use.

Why not get the remote/control clickers instead that are used in many colleges? The problem with smartphones in the classroom are -

1) It requires parents to buy a smartphone and pay for a data plan. Besides the financial commitment of purchasing a phone and data plan - about $30 a month in addition to the regular line charge, some parents don't want their child having internet access unsupervised

2) Middle schoolers are very prone to be distracted by phones. Instead of sitting in the classroom, using the phone for school. many of them will be posting to facebook, texting their friends and tweeting up a storm.

3) Lots of stuff gets stolen at middle school. Kids sometimes leave their lockers open, or their lockers get broken into. There is no way to keep the phones secure, especially at gym. My child has a cheap phone because I have heard of so many kids getting their phones stolen that I am not going to supply her with something expensive that I will have to eventually replace at about $100 per occurrance.

The clickers remain in school, have no market value to anyone, don't allow for distractions and perform the same functions that allow students to chime in and give the teacher feedback, without any of the downsides that come with 30 kids having smartphones in the classroom.

Perhaps somebody should map out exactly how technology is going to improve the learning process before we ask parents to waste a small fortune on the latest handheld gadgets.

its training for the future. I can count on 1 hand the number of times in a month that I deal with a cashier or other customer service type employee who ISN'T texting or otherwise using a cell phone in a manner unrelated to my transaction.

tjohn said:

Perhaps somebody should map out exactly how technology is going to improve the learning process before we ask parents to waste a small fortune on the latest handheld gadgets.

This is my issue as an educator. In my 20+ years in the classroom I have seen so much money spent on some new technology that ultimately does not make a difference. Sometimes it is quickly outdated (CD-rom players replaced by DVD players) and other times not enough is done to implement the technology. As a result, I have developed a "wait and see" attitude.

I am not a Luddite. I use a website and communicate daily with my students via email. There are some great programs that allow my students to present their ideas in a creative fashion.

Yet with all the technology already in use in the classroom, does anyone feel that today's students are better prepared than students who graduated over 30 years ago?

And I absolutely agree with Campbell29.

I struggle with this too...when my daughter was in 6th grade at SOMS, cells phones had to be left in lockers during the day, or would be confiscated. Then, with a change in principals, cells phones began to be used as classroom tools, and thus allowed all day. I'm unsure about this for the following reasons (echoing what others have said):

1. I think it is terrible to encourage uses that require data plans. It creates a divide between kids whose parents choose/can afford a $30 a month data plan, and those who cannot. I don't think the schools would readily add a $240/year data plan to the supply lists, and I think we need to make sure that smartphones don't become a school supply that separates the haves from the have-nots.

2. The distraction risk, not only of texting during class, but of having an "educational" reason to take a video game terminal to school. My child is peeved because so many of her friends have devices (phones/Kindles/Nooks) that can play Angry Birds and the like at lunch and advisory, while I make her leave her video games at home. And, during the recent walk out protest, she was struck by the number of text messages that those outside the school were getting from those inside the school throughout the day....to her it is pretty clear that in-class texting is taking place.

I'd be willing to figure out how to manage the distraction risk, but the school pressure to get smartphones is deeply troubling to me. I think that if teachers are going to incorporate smartphones into everyday classrooms, we need a solution that doesn't "call out" those who don't have them, or make them second class citizens educationally.

Until we are ready to put a smartphone and dataplan on a required school supply list and openly justify the expense to parents, I think we should be very careful about how teachers are using them.

I won't repeat all of my arguments from a previous thread here, but I will quickly summarize.
1) the history of technology since TV shows that tech has done very little to enhance education. TV, VCRs, CDs, DVDs, now the Internet and celluar have served one primary function -- making information available more quickly, information that was once found in a library or textbook. Grant that as a big positive step. As the Internet expanded so did the junk and useless stuff which makes it hard for kids to figure out what is right or wrong. But that is not a transformation of education by any stretch.
2) technology has often served as a detractor from education -- kids watch endless hours of TV and now endless hours texting for no great advantage or spending endless hours piling on to social media, again to no great advantage.
3) for every application you find that is cool, remember there are about 180 days of school and are there really so many wondrous apps that we can just scrap everything and tell all the kids to get out their phones and go to web site x instead of getting out the book or assignment? Is the magic of putting it on a screen tranformative? There seems to be the bias that if it is on screen it is modern and ipso facto better than if it is on a piece of paper. Maybe so and maybe that is the transformation so many think is at hand -- not knowledge nor understanding, but nice HD screens in color. OK. We will most likely transform education so that after a couple of generations we have kids who know even less than they do now and can't think at all. Good luck!

Just as there were always some great movies or shows or lessons on TV, VCR, CD or DVD, they did not replace the classroom. And a smartboard could never replace the classroom -- never. You are asking kids to sit through the equivalent of 180 days of powerpoint crap. If all we have is a bunch of apps on a smartboard, some of which might be very good or exellent, the basic premise is that school will remain school unless and until we decide as a society that something entirely new will take its place. Entirely new. And I have not seen even a glimmer of what that something new is, at least something that is new and better. If it isn't better but achieves the same result, then maybe its saving grace is that it might be cheaper. OK. At least that is an honest position that I can understand.

Before everyone who is a tech type piles on one more time, understand that I have helped push the robotics program at CHS and the kids have achieved remarkable results; we have a lot of kids in the district now engaged in robotics in elementary and middle schools as well as the high school; we are hoping to start a course on robotics in 2013-13 school year, perhaps as independent study in the second semester of 2012-13 school year; I hope to have a summer enrichment course in 2013 -- "introduction to engineering" -- using the West Point Bridge Design Software (http://bridgecontest.usma.edu) as well as other materials; initiated the Intel Science Talent Search program at CHS; among a few other things. I spent 20 years in the tech industry as an analyst.

I have been in science and tech all my life. Tech does transform some things but for education it is very very difficult.

I totally agree. Son has no phone and on day one of 6th grade two teachers in SOMS said take out your phone so we can play math/social studies jeopardy. The school handbook says no phones on/ I forget if it still says locker. I also have head of teachers taking personal phone calls in the class room during instruction time. I was going to complain but the new principal at SOMS has been touting the techie stuff since he first arrived. I figured I would not get a sympathetic ear. Son is finishing 7th grade still no phone. No plans on a smart phone for at least another year. Daughter just got one this year, with her own money 5 years older.

susan1014 said:

1. I think it is terrible to encourage uses that require data plans. It creates a divide between kids whose parents choose/can afford a $30 a month data plan, and those who cannot. I don't think the schools would readily add a $240/year data plan to the supply lists, and I think we need to make sure that smartphones don't become a school supply that separates the haves from the have-nots.

$360/year. But, yeah.

Syzygy said:

susan1014 said:

1. I think it is terrible to encourage uses that require data plans. It creates a divide between kids whose parents choose/can afford a $30 a month data plan, and those who cannot. I don't think the schools would readily add a $240/year data plan to the supply lists, and I think we need to make sure that smartphones don't become a school supply that separates the haves from the have-nots.

$360/year. But, yeah.

Yeah...I was being generous and only counting 8 months worth, but it is hard to get that plan!

Has anyone talked to the principal or board members? I'm curious about their take on this -- seems to create a huge have/have not division in the classes. (My kid is a have not.)

Going back to the original post, it seems like a silly use of technology in the first place.

I have an idea. Teach students - at least advanced math and science students - how to use a slide rule. Through hand held calculators in the garbage until they understand what they are doing.

from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slide_rule

"
The spatial, manual operation of slide rules cultivates in the user an intuition for numerical relationships and scale that people who have used only digital calculators often lack. Since users must explicitly note the order of magnitude at each step in order to interpret the results, they are less likely to make extreme calculation errors; users are forced to use common sense and an understanding of the subject as they calculate. Since order of magnitude gets the greatest prominence when using a slide rule, and precision is limited only to the few digits that are normally useful, users are less likely to make errors of false precision."

Just for a bit of context: Here's how we use the "clickers" in our college classroom. Say the teacher posts up a problem/question on the board/screen with three multiple-choice answers. Each student "clicks" what they think the answer is and the teacher displays the current tallies on the board. Students are then asked to find a neighbor who has a different answer then they gave, and show them why they think their answer is correct. Then they click in a revised answer. Usually two or three rounds of this is sufficient for the class to converge on the right answer.

I would say I have seen this used in large lecture halls in economics, ethics, film studies, history, psychology and maybe a few others. Can't say I know of any math faculty using this but I will ask around.

There may be other uses for clickers but the context I see most often is large class sizes (e.g., 100's of students) where clickers are used as a means to get students interacting.

The above application is fine and probably works well at the college level in those large classes. It simply refines the process of where a teacher says "how many got answer A", "how many got answer B" and so on. It saves time. The teacher in both cases could ask each student to find a neighbor who had a different answer. For the teacher, the key thing is how many got it right and how many got it wrong. If designed cleverly, one wrong answer choice may indicate one kind of misstep and the other wrong choice will highlight a different type of mistake. The clicker simply gives a faster readout with accurate percentages. Useful but hardly a transformation. We have this at CHS in some classrooms.

As a college professor I have been dealing with this issue all year long. I have tried to compromise by having students integrate the computers and smart phones in the classroom experience. I can tell you that this doesn't work. Students are on fb, buying things from Amazon, sending texts, etc. I find it rude, distracting and disrespectful. Other students have begun to confront students about the distraction. They are not involved in the lessons, do not contribute to class and are, for the most part, preoccupied with the phone. If they start this in Middle School it has to be measured and integrated into the classroom. I agree that it is mostly used by those who are "privileged"

I am hoping that SOMS' principal is reading this thread. I am the parent of an incoming sixth grader and I don't want him using his cell phone in school at all. I have told both of my children that they will get smart phones when they have jobs and can pay for a smartphone plan -- it's a luxury item and I'd rather funnel the money to the college fund. At the orientation meeting last week the principal suggested we all get Twitter accounts. I'm pretty appalled -- since I believe that while technology can be a wonderful tool for work and communication -- Facebook and Twitter are mixed bags. It is up to parents how much Internet exposure, and what kinds, we we want our children to have. Those of us who believe that Facebook can provide unwanted exposure of our children, and who believe that Twitter is a waste of time -- and I coun't myself among those people -- are not going to easily accept this in our schools. Technology -- smart boards, teacher websites, educational websites -- have a place in our schools. Twitter and Facebook? Please.

ral,
I doubt that he reads this-- too "old school" (like the proximas we still use on my job!!). Perhaps we could tweet him out thoughts but I doubt that any of us could be brief enough for that. Good that he now allows cell phones in school so that my 8th grader was able to call me on her phone (non-smart though it is) and ask permission to participate in the sit-in. Permission granted.

I dug out the password for my one-time twitter account simply so that I could follow the tweets of the SOMS principal, the school librarian, the superintendent of schools and the S.O. Village President, all of whom are much fonder of Twitter than I am.

Ugh. I have no use for Twitter. Nothing I want to read can be tweeted, and everything I might want to say is too qualified and labored to reduce to a tweet worth reading; any such comment has already been thought up by the recipient anyway, so why bother saying it?

As for FB, big freaking waste of time. First we had letters to the editor, op eds, and retorts from authors. Then the internet came along and we had email list serves and discussion forums attached to periodicals. Then we had blogs. All of these things had their virtues.

Then Mark Zuckerberg emerged and we all had to have a Wall upon which to post deep trivia. Why do I maintain a Facebook account? Because several old friends from ancient times and distant places somehow found it more appealing than email, and in order to communicate with them I had to conform.

But I avoid FB as much as possible. The last damn thing I want is to have to tune in to postings and tweets from my kids' school.

bioremediation - where do you teach? I would Love to send my child to a school for math & science and am having trouble finding one locally.

Hello, I teach biology, anatomy and physiology and earth sciences at Stuyvesant High School. Only NYC residents are allowed to take the test to get into the school. For the most part we try to use technology in our lab courses ie document cameras, digital PCR, etc. However, although I can only rely on empirical evidence, white boards have proved to be useless for our students. Even power point presentations are problematic. Death by power point is what some teachers and students call it. The only technology that I use daily are graphing calculators. But it is really crucial to do the math/statistics on the black broad ( with student involvement) and have students copy it and do that again and again. Additionally what we are seeing among my colleagues ( again I have no real data to substantiate this claim) is a lazy intellectual inertia by our students. There is no need to memorize or integrate factual material. Google provides everything anyone what to know at the speed of light. Why memorize or try to retrieve information. It's all there at the ready. Ideas, concepts are all animated. It makes teaching easier, but I am not sure we are teaching students how to think. Moreover, texting, twittering, facebooking( stock is down 20%!!) have created bad linguistic habits. The principal at SOMS needs to be careful. This is a slippery slope . Math is taught so oddly in this district that I hope they really think about the consequences of using cell phones, not to mention the other technologies in the classroom.

Jude, please contact me. I was an the intel coordinator and currently help students with the YES competition. It would be great to get CHS students involved with YES.

Let me echo bioremediation's comments. Many of the people infatuated with the glitz of technology are already educated and have, at least I hope they have, learned how to think. If technology is to make things easier -- and it has -- then we eventually do not know how to do anything; the machines will do it for us. Every kid has a calculator and they have learned how NOT to see mathematical relationships. Even simple relationships are befuddling kids and they are not just our weak students who whip out the calculator to figure out the complex calculation (12)*(8/6). Most students will not see that this is simply 16. They will laboriously calculate 8 divided by 6 to get 1.333 and they then multiply by 12 and will invariably get something like 15.996 if their calculators round. The answer is precisely 16 and not 15.996.

You will find students increasingly unable to estimate anything -- is the answer around 10 or 100 or 1000. Many cannot tell you. Since they can't estimate, they do not know if the calculator gives them the right answer. I often relate this to my students: suppose you have a multiple choice test. Suppose there are 10 questions. Suppose you are 99% accurate in typing in the keystrokes on your calculator. Suppose each problem requires 20 keystrokes. That's 200 keystrokes and you will make 2 input errors. That could drop your grade to 8 out of 10 assuming you know exactly what to do on every problem. So a 1% error rate translates to a possible 20% error rate on the scoring.

Kids sometimes ask me how I do calculations so fast at the board. I simply say I was raised in a different era where there were no calculators, just our brains. Obviously, for large and complex problems one needs to crunch large datasets and that can be done only by a computer. But if you have no clue as to how it works, what it does and why, then you are really somewhat useless. Like many of the quants on Wall Street who made up such complex financial investments that even they were not sure how they worked (otherwise would everything have crashed so splendidly), we are moving into uncharted waters. We have kids today who simply have little awareness of what this stuff means. If they cannot be forced to think through and understand what the mathematics is telling them, then we certainly cannot help them by forcing them to do even less -- go on the Internet and google and so forth.

Toss the calculators. Bring back slide rules. Wonderful devices. I feel fortunate that my freshmen class in college was still required to use them - that was the last year.

And if the SOM principal thinks Twitter has a role in his official capacities as principal, then he needs to be shown the door.

Two thoughts regarding middle school smart phones for all.....I bet SOMS could eventually become the dominate force in the 12 to 14 Angry Birds arena. The other is that parents could now tweet their kids in the classroom, saving us the annoyance of having to wait until they got home to tell them to put the phone down and do homework.

Today's tweet from SOMS_Principal, for those curious about the current approach:

"Ms. Malespina introducing Evernote 2 Ms. Levine's 7th graders - asking them 2 take out their smart phones! SOMS is ready 4 1:1"