Living in the 4th Screen

Exploring the use of mobile technology in education and life

Does structured use of cellphones reduce the irresponsible uses of cellphones at other times?

Paul Barnwell makes some compelling points and raises good questions regarding the use of cellphones in classrooms. In a recent article he wrote for Education Week he states:
There are responsible ways to incorporate cellphone use into classrooms, and we may be doing students a disservice by allowing draconian anti-cellphone policies to persist in schools.
This has been the experience at our school. Some of our teachers use student cellphones and Google Voice to record and assess students speaking in the target language in our world language classrooms. How do you record and assess world language students at your school?

Further on in the article Mr. Barnwell said the following:
There are other questions thoughtful school leadership teams should consider. Incorporating laptops or other technologies into a classroom can be time-consuming and frustrating, for example. At my middle school, we have a wireless network with mobile laptop carts. But the computers are fast becoming outdated, and the boot time is painfully slow on some machines. For a student with a cellphone, however, the time to “boot up” and retrieve, create, or share information is comparatively minuscule. This could be a major advantage for teachers wanting to incorporate quick Web searches, collaboration, or idea sharing, and it also lessens the pressure on school wireless-network infrastructures.
Cell phones and iPods boot up almost instantly. One of the takeaways our teachers learned from using student cellphones in the classroom was how quickly they were able to record each student speaking in the target language. This left more time for instruction, amongst other things.

Students live in the world of texting. If you want to reach them texting is the best option. Barnwell address that in the following:

How cool would it be if school announcements were sent to students on their phones? Or, instead of using a blaring PA system, the main office could text a student to come and pick up the lunch he or she forgot on the counter at home? Or perhaps students could openly record cellphone video of teachers for test-review purposes. Or teachers could send texted reminders to students about homework assignments.

I use Outlook to send text message reminders to students who have a detention. If a student misses a detention they have it doubled. To avoid this I send the students a reminder between the last two periods of the day. The students love it and it has cut down on the number of students who miss detentions. I use the Delayed Delivery option in Outlook to set this up.

Finally Barnwell states the following:

Opponents of this type of innovative approach are likely to bring up the potential distractions and abuses that cellphones in school can certainly create, like covert and sneaky text or picture messaging between friends. But guess what? We did the same thing back in our day, writing notes to our friends on actual paper. Inappropriate communication in school will never cease. I expect, however, that structured use of cellphones in my classroom would reduce the temptation to use them in irresponsible ways.

All kinds of things cause disruptions in classrooms everyday. Pencils and paper cause distractions but we don't ban them. In my opinion Barnwell makes his best statement when he says, "...that structured use of cellphones in my classroom would reduce the temptation to use them in irresponsible ways." That has been our experience here at the school where I work. I posted about this a while back. In the first half of this year we saw a decrease in the number of cellphone violations compared to last year when we did not allow students to use their cell phones at all during the school day. Students have told me that by allowing them to use their cellphones between classes and during lunch it decreases the temptation to use their cellphone at other inappropriate times.

Follow the link above to read the full article. Paul Barnwell has a blog titled Questions for Schools .