Class, put those phones away…but wait!
By Eric Mackowiak, October 2014
The teacher writes on the blackboard and the students pull out their textbooks. The teacher writes words on the board and the student’s copy on their paper with their ink-dipped quills. There are about 10 children in the classroom, half of which aren’t wearing shoes. A cow stands outside grazing. It is 1775, and the concept of a cellphone won’t be visualized for about another 200 years.
Today, everywhere you see, students have some type of cell phone. They use their phones constantly in and out of school. According to a recent study, the average cell phone user checks their phone around 110 times a day (Woollaston, 2013). This number is most likely even higher for teenagers and young adults.
Retrieved from http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2449632/How-check-phone-The-average-person-does-110-times-DAY-6-seconds-evening.html
Now put yourself in the classroom. You’re the teacher, trying to garner your kid’s attention and you’re met with heads turned down and fingers typing away. What do you do?
Make the problem the solution!!!!
Cell phones can be so much more than a distraction, and may even help save your classroom. Concepts such as social media, digital citizenship, content-knowledge versus skill building, Internet filtering and safety laws, teaching techniques, bring-your-own-device policies, and school budgets all come with cell phone use (Barseghian, 2012).
Let’s face it. This is the 21st Century and if you’re not ahead, you’re definitely behind when it comes to technology. New emerging devices are allowing users more and more freedoms when it comes to educational, social, political, and scientific avenues. The possibilities are endless. So why are they ending in the classroom?
Some great advice comes from an article that I read from an educational review website. Some bullet points that it makes are:
· New Internet SMS and messaging services are proving especially useful to language teachers, turning toward whole language oral output and pronunciation.
· Cell phones give faculty access to students both in and out of the classroom, providing greater power to instruct, encourage, motivate, and engage.
· Students who record their voices in computer language labs or using cell phones become more engaged and invested. (Jobe, 2009).
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Speaking more specifically on the last point about student recorded voices; this could be an excellent way to facilitate engagement.
As educators we can help students learn how to use their everyday “toy” as a “tool” for constructing knowledge. With the new audio input feature of many Weblog sites such as blogger.com and blogzy.com, students can use their cell phones to create blogs, collect and store data, and develop multimedia projects (Kolb, 2006).
Students would then be more invested in their own learning process. It would keep them accountable and self-checking. Audio blogs don’t necessarily have to only be used in English and Reading classrooms. You could create blogs about history, or scientific experiments, and the number scale. You could conduct interviews; make audio journals, or audible notes.
Students Aren’t the Only Ones Using Them
Teachers as professionals are always sharing. This accounts for higher use of new technology, whether it is on a cell phone, tablet, laptop, or PC. Educators are trying to keep up with their students, and that means getting “hip” with technology. According to a website, Mashable, around 58% of teachers own a smartphone compared to 48% of all adults owning one (Bautista, 2013). If clear communication is established and accompanied by collaboration with students, teachers, and parents, then a more unified classroom would emerge. Teachers who have gone to seminars, workshops, and conferences about effective technology use in the classroom are beyond beneficial to student learning. We live in an era where those who are being born are more exposed than ever to technology. This generation is referred to as “digital natives”, meaning that digital devices and their uses are more customary to their learning and development. Teachers realize this.
A quote from Linda Burch, co-founder at Common Sense Media, relates, “Teachers are really active sharers and connectors from time immemorial. “They’re people who like to gain knowledge from others and in digital literacy teachers are the best evangelists. They want to understand how to improve their practice” (Bautista, 2013).
One instructor has found a really engaging and well thought out way of teaching through the use of a cellphone. She uses a website called PollEverywhere, which allows the teacher to send questions, surveys, or quizzes to the student through text messaging (Kolb, 2011). The answers are calculated and displayed in graphs on the board. They also:
· Created podcasts
· Conducted research
· Captured notes
· Completed homework
Link to PollEverywhere: http://www.polleverywhere.com
Retrieved from http://pixgood.com/students-using-cellphones-in-school.html
The Times Are A Changing
Today, according to research done by PEW, 75% of teen’s access the Internet on their smartphone or tablet. 23% themselves own a tablet. 37% have smartphones, where 45% of adults own one. 23% of those surveyed are “cell” only Internet users. Adults who are “cell” only top off at 15%( Pew Research Center, 2013).
When you look at these statistics you notice that children, teens, and young adults are being their elders in cell phone use, mainly for Internet purposes. This makes you wonder then, why more schools are implementing cell phone driven curriculums. It seems like it would make sense to bring school and home life closer together in order to reach the student more proficiently.
There is evidence that cell phones are getting good use in classrooms, according to USA Today. In an article it stated that 73% of Advanced Placement and National Writing teachers have students use cell phones to complete homework assignments. They use the cell phone to answer questions, work on group projects, teacher to student feedback, and take notes (Higgins, 2013).
Unfortunately, for most schools and their districts, fostering a digital environment can prove difficult. From the USA Today article, it stated that 80% of U.S. schools do not have the infrastructure to support digital learning (Higgins, 2013). This is most likely due to outdated buildings, and expensive costs to change the layout and capabilities of the school. The government needs to take action on the matter, and make a decision on whether or not it feels digital learning is essential enough to be included in all school districts. Steps need to be taken in order to move forward into the digital age. We, as a nation, have come to a crossroads. Do we embrace digital learning, or make due without it?
The Impact of Mobile Phone Usage
The worst thing that could happen with cellphones and classrooms is the fostering of an uneducational, potentially distracting environment, where work scarcely gets done. This could happen with the improper use of cell phone class time, and if the cell phones being used are not engaging the student in the learning process. For example, if the student is text messaging their friend(s), or going on Facebook, or making online purchases. If teachers do not monitor how their students are using their cell phones in the class, then this push for technology is all for nothing. Without proper management, no work can be done. Cell phones, tablets, laptops can all prove distracting, or cause unproductive behavior, if handled without care. Keeping the lesson engaging and curiosity-driven, students will have no problem staying engrossed in the material.
Heres a video of one school going the extra mile in their research into the impact of cell phones in classrooms:
Ways Students Are Getting it Done
Cell phones aren’t just for high school students to use. More and more middle school children are using technology in their daily lives, as well as at school. Research from TRU, the leading researcher in youth studies, found that 39% of middle-schooler’s used smartphones, and 31% used tablets for completing homework (Nielsen, 2013). Their studies show support that students use cell phones to learn. I, myself, can agree to this conclusion. Whenever I have a question I want answered immediately, I just pull out my cell phone and Google what it was I wanted to know. The world is at your fingertips. There are many techniques to cell phone use educationally.
1. Basic Communication
2. Training Delivery
3. Info Access
4. Social Networking
5. Content Creation
These areas of development make the argument for why students need cell phones in the classroom (Nielson, 2013). Of course there will always be opposition to the inclusion of technology, especially mobile, in the classroom. If those challenges and disputes are met with hard evidence and testimony to the contrary, by students and teachers, then there should be definite hope for cell phones to make their way into the curriculum.
We Are Writers, Yes We Are
With so many avenues of publication available, it’s not hard to believe that there are more writers than ever before. Jeff Grabill, a writing professor from MSU, feels that people are writing more now than ever due to these technological devices (Schuster, 2013). Networks such as Twitter, Facebook, blogs, apps have allowed for massive amounts of writing to take place.
Limiting yourself in the classroom will hurt everyone and impede on the learning process. You might as well pick up that little device that holds the world inside it and make good use of it…
What’s the worst in trying in trying it out?
Reference list:
Bautista, C. (2013, February 28). 73% of Teachers Use Cellphones for Classroom Activities. Retrieved November 10, 2014, from http://mashable.com/2013/02/28/teachers-technology/
Cortesi, S., Duggan, M., Gasser, U., Lenhart, A., & Madden, M. (2013, March 13). Teens and Technology, 2013. Retrieved November 10, 2014, from http://www.pewinternet.org/files/old- media/Files/Reports/2013/PIP_TeensandTechnology2013.pdf
Higgins, J. (2013, August 7). More schools allowing students to bring smart phones, tablets to the classroom. Retrieved November 10, 2014, from http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/personal/2013/08/07/views-shift- on-cell-phones-in-schools/2607381/
Jeffrey H. Kuznekoff & Scott Titsworth (2013) The Impact of Mobile Phone Usage on Student Learning, Communication Education, 62:3, 233- 252, DOI: 10.1080/03634523.2013.767917
Kolb, L. (2011, January 1). Adventures with Cellphones. Retrieved November 10, 2014, from http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational- leadership/feb11/vol68/num05/adventures-with-cell-phones.aspx
Nielsen, L. (2013, February 16). Finally! Research-based proof that students use cell phones for LEARNING. Retrieved November 10, 2014, from http://theinnovativeeducator.blogspot.com/2013/02/finally-research- based-proof-that.html
Schuster, S. (2013, November 25). National research shows use of cellphones in classrooms changing student learning. Retrieved November 10, 2014, from http://statenews.com/article/2013/11/tuned- out
