Living in the 4th Screen

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.

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 But the computers are fast becoming outdated, and the boot time is painfully slow on some machines.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.

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.

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Text Education is coming to Canadian schools in the form of TextEd curriculum. This Times-Colonist online article reports that during the month of January 100 seventh grade classrooms across Canada will begin implementing the new curriculum. The remainder of schools will implement the program in September 2010.

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Since No Child Left Behind (NCLB) has taken root in our schools no one wants to pursue any new initiative unless there is empirical data to support the decision. In an article in Education Week's Digital Directions the following is stated:

“The enthusiasm for [mobile learning] is based on observation and just expert thinking, and not on a lot of hard data,” says Robert Spielvogel, the chief technology officer and director of applied research and innovation at the Newton, Mass.-based Education Development Center. “Teachers’ experience so far, because there aren’t instructionally validated applications, is that cellphones and the like are only a distraction.”

I understand and support the need to justify spending limited education funds, but that should not mean it always has to directly affect a student's grades. Let me explain.

Currently I send students a text message, using my school email account, in between their last two periods of the day to remind them that they have detention at the end of school (read here and here). I am not sure that this process directly impacts these student's grades, but it keeps them from missing detention and having it doubled. Student's cell phones can help them with organization and scheduling. Last week at our class meetings I shared with some of the classes how they could use their Gmail accounts and Google calendar to set up text reminders to remind themselves of just about anything they could think of. The service works with any phone that receives text messages. This is a great productivity application and there are no additional costs to the students other than the fee for a text. At this point most students have unlimited text plans so that should not be an issue. Does being more productive and better organized improve student grades? Probably, but I am not sure there is a direct correlation that would satisfy NCLB hounds. Let students use their phones during the school day.

Many naysayers will complain that cell phones are disruptive during the school day. The internet in schools is very disrupting. There are lots of bad websites that I would not want my students or my own children on, but we have not banned the internet from schools. Instead we have embraced it and have found a way to utilize the good the internet offers and protect students from bad or harmful websites. We need to do the same with student cell phones. Embrace the good and learn how to minimize the disruptive practices that students engage in. The same article mentioned above says:

“As we start showing what’s an appropriate use for mobile learning devices, and as people get more comfortable with having them available in the classroom,” Spielvogel says, they will be viewed by more teachers as valuable instructional tools.

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