Living in the 4th Screen

Exploring the use of mobile technology in education and life

Horizon Report: Mobile is King in the Near-Term

The latest edition of the Horizon Report came out yesterday. The Journal had a summary of what the report includes. Here is what The Journal said the report predicts for the near-term:

Near-Term Technologies

In the near term--one year or less--those technologies include cloud computing and mobile devices.

For education, the relevance of cloud computing this year--as opposed to last year, when cloud computing was focused more heavily on data systems--will be in allowing schools to expand the tools available for learning and teaching in ways that desktop software, with its restrictive licensing and often high costs, cannot.

"Schools are increasingly taking advantage of ready-made applications hosted on a dynamic, ever-expanding cloud that enables end users to perform tasks that have traditionally required site licensing, installation, and maintenance of individual software packages," according to the authors. "E-mail, word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, collaboration, media editing, and more can all be done inside a Web browser, while the software and files are housed in the cloud."

Mobile devices, of course, are already having an impact, but their potential, according to the report, has increased considerably with the launch of Apple's iPad, as well as the new and upcoming slate of Android- and webOS-based tablets that will help solidify the mobile/handheld device class as a well rounded and feature-rich technology category.

"With always-on Internet, mobiles embody the convergence of several technologies that lend themselves to educational use, including electronic book readers, annotation tools, applications for creation and composition, and social networking tools," the report said.

Mobile computing will continue to dominate the education landscape for the foreseeable future. Ubiquitous access, instant on features, and low price point will drive more adoption of these devices. I have seen a huge increase in adoption of the iPhone since it became available on Verizon in the school where I work.

Should students be allowed to use their own electronic devices in school?

It is only a matter of time before schools allow students to bring their own electronic devices to school. Below is a snippet from an article in this weeks eSchools News titled "Bring your own device’ catching on in schools."

Mobile devices are now found in the hands of most children, and school leaders are using that to their advantage by incorporating devices that students already own into classroom lessons and projects.

Concerns remain about students who are unable to purchase or borrow a device for use in the classroom, but districts might find creative ways—such as asking local businesses or community organizations for help—to provide devices in such instances, advocates of the trend say.

With access issues in mind, allowing students to bring their own devices from home can offer educational benefits, as well as some surprisingly positive results when it comes to creative thinking and classroom behavior.

You can read the full article here.

Free Resources for Teachers to communicate with students or parents and never give out your personal cell phone number

Below are some resources to help you use email or text messages to communicate with your students. These services work for class assignment reminders, communicating with students on a class trip, updating the members (and parents) of a sports team about a change in practice, and so on and so forth.


Remind101_logo
 Remind 101 is a free service you can use to set up text or email reminders for when assignments are due. As a teacher you create an account and then set up classes. The students can then log in and set up what kind of reminders they want to receive (text, email, or both). You can set reminders up in advance or as you go along through the semester. Parents can even create an account and choose to get the reminders.


Cel.ly is a new mass text messaging
service that says they are interested in schools using their free service! You can get started by texting "start" to 23559. Cel.ly will then ask you for a login and password. You can then go to the website Cel.ly, login and set up text message channels. Each channel is set up with a keyword so that students, teachers, community members, and parents can join your mass text message with a keyword from their cell phone! There does not seem to be a limit on the number of people that can join your mass alert. Cel.ly also gives you three choices in how you want to set up the mass text alerts. You can have all members send messages back and forth to the whole group. You can have only the teacher (owner of the channel) send messages to the group. You can have the group members send messages back to the teacher only! In addition your texting channel can be public or private! All messages are archived in Cel.ly! You can send messages via the Cel.ly website or via phone. It works quickly and easily!

Pulse.to is similar to Cel.ly. You can login to the website, create a free account and then you start to set up pulses. You can have a public or private mass texting channel (called "pulses"). In addition, you can select if only the pulse owner can send messages or if everyone in the group can send messages. Pulse.to works in many different countries besides the US and Canada! In addition there is not a short code to join, rather students/teachers/parents can text in to a real phone number (so phones that don't work with short codes or keywords will still work with this service!).

Voice_logo
 Google Voice is a free service from Google that allows you to get a phone number that you can use to ring all of you phones. Sign up for a free account and you can use it for the services listed above with your students. This way you never have to give out your cell phone number to students. You give them your Google Voice number. You can set the Google Voice number to ring whatever phone you want to. You can have voice mails go to your email account, your cell phone, home phone, your neighbor's phone, or any phone you choose. It can even ring all those phones at once if you want. You can set up the number to send you a text message when you get a new call. You can give out the number and use it for text messaging as well. Using Google Voice with the one of the services mentioned above allows you to communicate with your students without ever giving out your personal phone number.

Thanks to Liz Kolb (@lkolb) for most of this information.

Stop giving out mobile devices and beefup your wireless access

Below is a snippet from an article about George Fox University about how they are getting out of the business of giving out laptops to students and instead putting the money into their wireless infrastructure.

The proliferation of smart phones and other mobile devices has also lessened the need for a laptop on campus, said Smith. Already equipped with multiple WiFi-enabled devices, students don't really need another piece of equipment, particularly one that's partly or entirely controlled by their institution of higher education. 

So instead of focusing on equipment giveaways, Smith said, George Fox University is focusing its efforts on beefing up its WiFi network to accommodate all of those devices.

"That's where we'll be throwing most of our dollars (the money saved by not having to buy laptops) this year," said Smith, who pointed to coverage and density as the two biggest issues that the college will be addressing within its wireless network. "We've seen weaknesses within our network, and we'll be working to address them."

The full article can be read here.

Given the proliferation of ubiquitous mobile computing devices I think this is the proper strategy going forward for schools and universities. Spend your money beefing up your wireless infrastructure and allow students to use their own devices. The best mobile computing device is the one the student is most comfortable using.

Mobile Reviews with Study Boost

There is a new free resource called Study Boost that connects with mobile phones. You create an account on Study Boost, then you can create your own "batches" of study questions. You can subscribe to the study questions via cell phone (you can also view them on the mobile web). In addition you can share your study questions with friends, teachers, and others so they can also review on the go.

Study Boost would be a great project for extending learning and allowing students to study at their own pace (and on the go!).

This is a repost from Toy to Tools: Cell Phones in Schools. 

Why Mobile is a Must

T.H.E. Journal

Expert Perspective

Why Mobile Is a Must

We need a new educational model that makes learning personal and motivating, and helps secure our students’ future in the knowledge economy. Mobile technology opens the door to it.

  • By Mary McCaffrey
  • 02/08/11

Imagine a group of kids working together on a retrospective of the Civil War. One student is at the public library, going through microfilm of newspaper articles from 1861 to 1865. She finds a reference to the political ramifications of a certain battle--notably, a picture of an influential officer. The student then uses her smartphone to snap a picture of the microfilm screen and sends the picture and caption to her group for additional research.

EXPERT PERSPECTIVE

This commentary launches a new column in THE Journal offering an industry expert's view on a topic of vital interest to the ed tech community.

Meanwhile, a second member of the group is reviewing gravesites and comes across some ambiguous headstones. He takes out his tablet computer and, after a quick bit of online research, locates the appropriate person. While all of this is happening, yet another student is conducting a face-to-face interview with a relative of a Civil War veteran. Rather than hastily throwing together handwritten notes, this student is using his MP3 player to record the conversation. Later, he'll upload it to the group's Web-based project space for the other team members to hear.

What makes these authentic, intimate learning opportunities possible? Mobile technologies. Mobile devices provide the platform and, as importantly, the incentive for students to take personal ownership of the learning experience. The lessons absorbed form deep connections for students and add to their cognitive framework in ways that no lecture ever could.

A Desktop in Your Pocket
Today's mobile technologies bear little resemblance, functionally or physically, to first-generation cell phones. They include a broad array of devices such as music and video players, cell phones, smartphones, tablets, and netbooks, all with access to cellular carrier networks, WiFi, or both. And while features and performance continue to climb, prices regularly drop, making mobile devices virtually ubiquitous.

The potential enormity of this user base has attracted software developers large and small. Nearly every available mobile device supports third-party application development, providing a rich selection of productivity, entertainment, and education applications, along with core functionality such as instant messaging, e-mail, calendar, and Web browsing. And advances in processor performance, storage, cameras, and sound have all contributed to providing users the same rich media experience they've come to expect from desktop systems. The integration of QWERTY keyboards is making obsolete the days of pecking out text messages using a numeric keypad. Also common are large, high-resolution displays that offer onscreen keyboards, multitouch gestures, and the ability to clearly view the screen both indoors and out. All of this combines to create the equivalent of a pocket desktop, in a portable, always-connected form factor.

So what is all of this doing for K-12 education? Nothing short of disrupting and transforming the established teaching and learning paradigm. To start, mobile technology is helping to solve the two challenges facing education today: students' desire to learn differently, and students' need to learn differently.

Kids today are captivated by the personalization and socialization of online tools--the ability to build large networks of friends; share their thoughts, feelings, and goals; and communicate as they wish. Students have become so invested in mobile devices that our society has coined a new term for them--digital natives--to represent their having only known a world where all of this is possible. And not only is it possible, it's possible anytime and anywhere, via a plethora of devices and widely available cellular and WiFi networks.

The upshot is, these digital natives now have in their hands the tools to shape their own education in once unimagined ways. They have the ability to interact with other learners at their convenience, with differences in time and place presenting no hurdle. They can research, on the spot, any topic of interest. And they can capture the moment, whether it's in a picture, a video, or a blog entry.

Blessed with all of these capabilities, students have what they need to function in a knowledge economy. It's the obligation of 21st century educators to prepare students for this new economy, which means providing them with the skills to locate the most up-to-the-minute facts, and then turn those freshly acquired facts into solutions appropriate for the task at hand. So students must become effective researchers, which in turn requires them to develop an understanding of how to identify quality sources of information. Developing these new information retrieval skills requires us to encourage students to push beyond old boundaries of space (classrooms), content (textbooks), and authority (teachers).

Mobile devices fulfill all of these demands. They give students a tool that allows them to express themselves in any format they wish, build networks of sources, and perform on-the-spot research to produce and act on the most current facts. Moreover, it puts in their hands a technology that engages and relates to them and sparks their curiosity. Students can now participate in an individualized approach to learning, which occurs through personal application--the student as doer. To get the fullest benefits of this new learning mode, occasions for personal application have to be available to students in any setting--in the classroom during independent study, in the library with small groups, walking home from school, while waiting in line at the movie theater, and on and on. It's mobile technologies that give students the means of owning their education on these terms.

Tools of Engagement
Mobile devices are not the first technology to promise great improvements in education. Similar claims were made about e-books, distance learning, electronic whiteboards, and many more. But there are several differences between those earlier tools and the opportunity presented by the use of digital applications, resources, content, and the Internet in tandem with mobile devices.

To begin with, mobile technology and Internet access are already ubiquitous, requiring little or no capital investment by schools. Students--or really their parents--are the ones making that investment. Earlier educational technologies required schools to deploy the technology, incorporate it into the curriculum, and train the users. Once schools made it past the deployment and infrastructure issues, they often ran right into training as the next stumbling block.

This time around, students, generally already expert users, need little or no support, and faculty and staff quickly become acclimated. In any case, as opposed to requiring specialized support from a handful of experts, newcomers have an enormous user base to tap for assistance.

Plus, previous generations' tech innovations mostly perpetuated the traditional classroom structure, and in doing so missed out on perhaps the single most potent enabler of academic success--student engagement. Mobile technologies have no such failing. Students need no extra encouragement to use them. They already spend virtually every available moment on them, texting, instant messaging, posting personal status updates, and the like. All of that energy can also now be brought to their schoolwork.

Can you imagine telling a kid to stop spending so much time on algebra? Or not to go overboard on researching historical sources? Sounds like pure fantasy, but that could become the new reality if we have the courage to discard an outdated teaching methodology that doesn't reach today's students, and instead embrace their bustling, burgeoning digital world. Mobile devices applied in the context of education will engage students, foster deep and meaningful learning, and result in today's kids reaching frontiers that generations before them could never hope to glimpse.

Cell Phone Disruption by the Numbers - Part 3

 

In January 2010 I wrote two posts titled, "Cell Phone Disruption by the Numbers" and "What is More Disruptive - Banning or Embracing Cell Phones in the Classroom? ", both posts essentially talked about how we changed our school cell phone policy and allowed students to use their cell phones during the school day. I reported the number of cell phone violations we had in the first half of the year in 08-09 and how many we had in 09-10. Below is some of what I said then:
What is more disruptive, banning cell phones and requiring teachers to confiscate them, or embracing student cell phones and teaching students how to use them more responsibly. For the 2009-2010 school year we changed our cell phone policy at the school were I serve as an assistant principal. We allow students to use their cell phones in between classes and in the cafeteria during their lunch period. The rest of the school day is instructional time and their cell phones are to be off and out of site unless a teacher is using them as part of the lesson.
Additionally, we made another change to our cell phone policy. We no longer require teachers to confiscate a student's cell phone if they violate the policy. We tell the teachers to write up a conduct report and turn it in to the main office and we will handle it from there. Our goal was to eliminate the classroom struggle that ensues between the teacher and a student when there is a cell phone policy violation.
 
In June 2010 I wrote the post, "Cell Phone Disruption by the Numbers - Part 2 ", where I chronicled how many cell phone violations we had for the entire 2009-2010 school year. You can follow the link to read the entire post. I now have the number of cell phone violations we had for the period from September 1, 2010 to December 23, 2010. During that time we had 15 cell phone violations. This represents a 62.5% decrease over the 2008-2009 school year (the last year we did not allow cell phones to be used) and a 50% decrease over the 2009-2010 school year (the first year we allowed student to use cell phones during the school day) during the same period of time. Essentially cell phones have become a non-issue at our school. They are no more problematic than any other discipline issue we deal with on a weekly basis. By allowing the students to use the cell phones between classes and in their lunch periods we take away their arguments. Rarely does a student argue with us when we discipline them for a cell phone violation because we give them opportunities to use their cell phones throughout the day. Here is what the data looks like in a chart:
 
                                                   Time Period              Number of Cell Phone Violations
                                                Sept. - Dec. 2008                              40
                                                Sept. - Dec. 2009                              30
                                                Sept. - Dec. 2010                              15
 
Additonally some of our teachers use student cell phones as an instructional tool. You can read about it here, here, and here).

Will Smart Phones Eliminate the Digital Divide?

Will Smart Phones Eliminate the Digital Divide?

Within five years, every K-12 student in America will be using a mobile handheld device as a part of learning, according to Elliot Soloway, a professor at the University of Michigan who's been following ed tech trends for the last three decades.

Cathie and I make the following prediction: within five years, every child, in every grade, in every school in America will be using a mobile learning device, 24/7. Take that to the bank! Yes, while today, 99 percent of schools ban cell phones, we stick by this prediction?

To read the complete article, please go to:

Knox County Schools to consider new cell phone policy

As reported here, the Knox County School system is considering relaxing it's cell phone policy. Here are some quotes from the article:

The Knox County Board of Education is considering a more lenient policy when it comes to students using cell phones, including in some cases, allowing them to be used during classes.

The new policy would allow high school students to use the phones at various times during the day. Some schools already allow it, and are even finding them to be valuable tools.

Follow the link above to read the full article.

Who's Texting Who?

According to a recent article in Fast Company parents are texting their kids during the school day. Following is a quote from the article: 

"A shocking 66% of teens report that they've received texts from their parents, even when their parents know they're in class."

We allow students to use their cell phones between classes and in their lunch period so they can text mom, dad, and whoever else and hopefully this outlet removes the temptation to text during the class period. We tell the students the passing time between classes and their lunch period is their time. The 43 minutes during class is the teachers time. We are trying to teach the students when irbid appropriate to use their cell phone. Further on in the Fast Company article it says this:

"According to a new survey by app developer textPlus, which surveyed more than 600 of its users aged 13 to 17, texting is more rampant than ever in the classroom. A whopping 42.5% of teens admit to texting during class, and more than half of those say they text sometimes or constantly. What's more, nearly 80% of students say they've never gotten in trouble for texting during class, suggesting the eyes-down, cell-under-the-desk method is slipping past even your most yard-stick taunting school teachers."

The problem is not going away and schools have to start dealing with this. So far we have had some success. 

Below is the link for the full article. 

Some Schools Ban Teacher's Cell Phones

Just read this on a Scholastic.com Blog:
Q:  In my middle school/high school, kids aren’t allowed to use cell phones during the day (although we all know they do).  To “set a good example,” our principal has decided that teachers shouldn’t use them either.

Frankly, most of us consider this a ridiculous ruling.  Phones are available for teacher use in the faculty room or the office, but it’s much more convenient to call a parent, for example, on a cell phone from your own classroom.  And I’ll admit that it’s also more convenient to make appointments or take care of all the other business everyone has to contend with.  How can I convince my principal to move into the age of technology?
 If a staff member is misusing their cell phone in school I think that staff member should be dealt with on an individual basis. I do not agree with penalizing the entire staff. Cell phones have become ubiquitous within our society. I believe we are moving from the period of disruption to a period of acceptance. Just like when cars first came out. It took time to figure out how to use them appropriately and create laws and road signs. Eventually cars blended into society. That is what is happening with cell phones. Below is part of the answer to the question posted on the Scholastic blog:
A:  You might refer your principal to a survey done by the Pew Research Center last spring.  The survey found that 75% of kids age 12-17 own cell phones.  Twenty-four percent say their schools ban cell phones, but 65% bring them to school anyway and 58% admit to texting in class!

The Edjurist: Can Policies Stop the Mobile Learning Tsunami?

Can Policies Stop a Mobile Learning Tsunami? According to Education Law Professor, Justin Bathon, the answer is no. He wrote the following on his Edjurist Blog:

No. They can't. There is no legal floodwall even remotely big enough to stop this one.  

Yet, we keep trying ... and causing ourselves even more policy trouble in the effort because as we are trying to build the wall higher and stronger we are also trying to bail out the water already on the other side. 

Is it time to switch tactics yet? Is it time to go with the flow and help direct the waters in responsible directions? We legal types are the ones that need to let administrators know when it is appropriate to stop trying to plug the dam. That is our responsibility as their advisors. 

Meanwhile, the kids are waiting for us ...

I agree with Mr. Bathon. I like the angle he took in approaching this from a legal/policy perspective by asking if school policies will hold back the coming mobile tsunami. Students are using their cell phones in school whether the school bans them or not. The video below quotes the study by the Pew Internet and American Life Project that found over 60% of students who attend a school where cell phones are banned, still use them. I think it is more prudent for schools to embrace student cell phones and teach students how to use them responsibly. Below is a CNN video that discusses the issue of cell phones in schools.

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Apple Summer Learning Institute 2010

I am in Boston for a few days attending the Apple Summer Institute for Administrators. Apple knows how to put on a good event. Very nice hotel and very good food. They gave us a MacBook, iPod Touch, and an iPad to use for the two days of the conference. The conference centers around how to use Apple products to improve instruction and learning. Being a PC user who owns an iPhone, it has been interesting using their software on the MacBook. I have used Apple products before and I have always liked them. I can't believe how easy it is to use iMovie to create your own movies. My next computer purchase will definitely be an Apple. No surprise that Apple announced today that their MacBook sales are up. Their products are easier to use and more powerful.

Article: 5 Steps to Harnessing the Power of Cells in Education Today

The Innovative Educator wrote a post titled "5 Steps to Harnessing the Power of Cells in Education Today." Below is a copy of the 5 Steps with an explanation. Follow this link to read the complete article. The post lists ways to carry out each on of the 5 suggestions. 

Step One: Teacher Use of Cell Phones for Professional Purposes 
Remember, just because some schools and districts ban students from using cell phones, this does not apply to teachers. Begin harnessing the power of your own cell phone today as an instructional tool. 


Step Two: Teacher Models Appropriate Use for Learning 
Once you're comfortable using your cell phone as an instructional tool, you can begin modeling best practice and instructional use of cell phones to your students. Let them see ways they might consider using their phones to support instruction. 


Step Three: Strengthen the Home-School Connection with Cell Phones 
Cell phones provide a terrific means for connecting with student's parents, family, and guardians. Begin using phones to develop and strengthen those relationships. This provides a foundation and helps develop understanding around the benefits and value of cell phone use in general and later for use with students. The first thing you want to do is get a list of phone numbers from your student's parents, guardians, and/or family members. Once you do that there are many ways to use cells to support the home school connection.


Step Four: Students Use Cell Phones for Homework 
Before using cell phones in your classroom with students, begin giving students the option to use cell phones to complete their homework. This gives the teacher the opportunity to allow students to use cell phones for learning without classroom management concerns. This also gives students experience in using cell phones for learning. In most cases students can do the same work on a cell that they can on a laptop so if they have easier access to one over the other at different times they can choose what works best for them on that particular evening. Especially in families with limited technology resources, providing these sorts of options helps break down the digital divide. Suddenly the amount of technology available to a student for learning has increased dramatically. 


Step Five: Students Use Cell Phones for Classwork
Once you, your students, and their parents/guardians/families have become comfortable using cell phones as instructional tool and if your school or district empowers classroom teachers to make instructional decisions, you are ready to begin allowing students to harness the power of cell phones for learning. The first thing you'll want to do, even if your district or school has a policy is discuss acceptable use with students. Using a tool like Wiffiti or Polleverywhere may be a smart way to capture student ideas on acceptable use. You can have them contribute outside of school and once all students agree to the ideas shared they can sign a contract with a link to the resource containing the policies to which they developed and agreed. In many cases you'll find student rules and consequences are more stringent then those outlined in the school or district policy, but it's written in language everyone can understand. The results can be posted on the classroom or school website as well.

Classroom Cell Phone Disruption by the Numbers - Part 2

 
2007_09_kidscellphone
Back in January I wrote two posts titled, "Cell Phone Disruption by the Numbers" and "What is More Disruptive - Banning or Embracing Cell Phones in the Classroom? ", both posts essentially talked about how we changed our school cell phone policy and allowed students to use their cell phones during the school day. I reported the number of cell phone violations we had in the first half of the year in 08-09 and how many we had in 09-10. Below is some of what I said then:
What is more disruptive, banning cell phones and requiring teachers to confiscate them, or embracing student cell phones and teaching students how to use them more responsibly. For the 2009-2010 school year we changed our cell phone policy at the school were I serve as an assistant principal. We allow students to use their cell phones in between classes and in the cafeteria during their lunch period. The rest of the school day is instructional time and their cell phones are to be off and out of site unless a teacher is using them as part of the lesson.
 
Additionally, we made another change to our cell phone policy. We no longer require teachers to confiscate a student's cell phone if they violate the policy. We tell the teachers to write up a conduct report and turn it in to the main office and we will handle it from there. Our goal was to eliminate the classroom struggle that ensues between the teacher and a student when there is a cell phone policy violation.
 
The school I work in is a high school with about 1050 students. It is a middle to upper-middle class neighborhood. Almost all of our students carry a cell phone and an iPod of some sort.
For the first half of the year in 08-09 (Sept - Dec) when we did not allow students to use their cell phones during the school day we had over 40 violations. For the same time period in the 09-10 school year when we allowed students to use their cell phones during the school day we had 30 violations. I now have the final number of cell phone violations for the second half of the 09-10 school year (Jan - June). In the second half of the 08-09 school year we had 30 violations and in the same time period in the 09-10 school year we had 25 violations of our cell phone policy.
 
I also wrote this back in January:
Overall we have not had an increase in cell phone policy violations versus the same time last year when we did not allow cell phones to be used during the school day. In all honesty the students treated the change in the policy like it was no big deal. Many students have told me that by allowing them to use their phones it has removed the temptation to take them out at other times when it would be inappropriate. 

In all honesty I expected the violations for this school year (09-10) to be higher. One of the reasons I expected higher numbers was because teachers do not have to confiscate the student's cell phone when the student violates the policy. I thought this change in procedure would result in more discipline reports. Not the case.
In summary, we had 70+ cell phone violations for the 2008-2009 school year when students were not allowed to use their cell phones during the school day and 55 cell phone violations for the 2009-2010 school year when they were allowed to use the cell phones during their lunch periods and in the hallway between classes. I fully expected the number of cell phone violations to increase somewhat during the first year of a new policy. I also thought the fact that teachers did not have to confiscate the student's cell phone in order to write them up for a violation would make it easier for teachers to report violations and hence, expected more conduct reports dealing with cell phone violations. That did not happen.
 
Although pleased that our cell phone violations decreased, I am not exactly sure why. The students tell me that because they had opportunities to use their cell phones throughout the day it diminished the temptation to use them at inappropriate times. I am not naive to the fact that students still used their cell phones at inappropriate times this year and that not all those violations got reported to the office, but year over year we had a decrease in the number of cell phone violations. Overall a positive result. Students are certainly happier with the new policy and some parents have told me they are pleased with the change as it allows them to connect with their children during the day if they need to.
 
I have two final observations. First, the other assistant principal and I agonized in late spring and early summer in 2009 as we pondered a change in the cell phone policy. We didn't know what to expect. We contacted administrators and teachers from others schools who had made similar changes and peppered them with questions about how it turned out for them. We contacted some of our teachers over the summer and asked them what they thought of our idea of a new cell phone policy. Now looking back, we realize how foolish we were. The change in policy was really no big deal.
 
The second observation I made was that I thought a majority of students would be texting or talking on their cell phones during lunch. I expected to walk into our lunch area and see hundreds of students on their cell phones. This never happened. As a matter of fact I rarely saw more than 5 students at any given time on their cell phones, calling or texting. One day I had a colleague here from another school. I told her about our change in policy and we both walked into our lunch area to purposely count the number of students we observed using their cell phones. We saw 3 students texting and one listening to an iPod out of the 250 students who had lunch at that time. I read all the time that today's students do not know how to have face to face conversations because all they do is text. This has not been my experience. They are doing just fine when it comes to conversing with their peers.
 
Over the summer I will finish writing my paper reporting my findings this year with using cell phones as an instructional tool and will post it here when completed.
 
 I borrowed the picture from this website.

Scare tactics do not work when promoting Internet safety

According a report from the Online Safety and Technology Working Group (OSTWG) scare tatics do little to influence teenagers behavior regarding social networks and text messaging. The article in eSchool News can be found here. According to the article the OSTWG said:
" ... that proper education about appropriate online behavior and digital media consumption can help children evaluate potential online risks. The group suggested that the government “promote nationwide education in digital citizenship and media literacy as the cornerstone of internet safety.”
 
Recommendations include creating a web-based clearinghouse of online safety education research, avoiding scare tactics, promoting digital citizenship at all grade levels, establishing industry best practices for effective internet safety education programs, and looking to young people as experts in the online and digital media arenas by involving them in risk-prevention education.
 
Awareness efforts should be ongoing, and stakeholders should “promote greater transparency for parents as to what sort of content and information will be accessible and recorded with a given product when their child is online,” recommended a subcommittee on parental controls and child protection technology.
 
Follow the link above to read the full article.
 
 
 
 

Blog Title: Why Smartboards are a Dumb Initiative

On the Innovative Educator Blog there was this recent post titled "Why Smartboards are a Dumb Initiative" written by Michael Staton. Below is a snippet from the post:
 I roll my eyes every time I hear people talk about putting Smartboards in the classroom. Ugh….
Don’t get me wrong, Smartboards are cool. They are just the least cost-effective way to improve learning I’ve ever seen. (Except for building new physical plant, that’s worse.)
  
Follow the link above to read the full article. I have already posted on this blog my feelings about Smartboards. I have the same reaction Michael Staton does when I here schools are purchasing Smartboards.

Cell Phones in School? Read this teachers perspective.

Charles Costello has been an English Teacher at Greenwich High School (Greenwich, CT) since 2002. On his blog Teacher Talk he wrote an article about whether or not students should have cell phones in class. Below is an excerpt from his blog post:

So what should be done? Well, I have my opinion. No cell phones or any other electronic devices allowed in school. If you’re caught with one, it should be confiscated and appropriate punishment should follow. Whether that means detention or suspension or something else, we can figure that out once we have the courage to ban these devices and show our students that we expect more from them. My classroom policy is that I deduct 10 points from a student’s quarter participation grade each time I see or hear a cell phone or IPOD. If they bring it to school, it must be concealed and turned off before they enter my classroom. 

Mr. Costello takes a rather strong stand against the use of cell phones in school. I can understand his frustration as a classroom teacher but I wonder what else is going on at this school that causes cell phones to be such a disruption. Even if students are allowed to have cell phones in school, there must be policies for how and when they can be used. Additionally, the policies need to be enforced when students violate them.

We allow students to use cell phones between classes and in lunch period. At all other times the cell phones must be off and out of sight, unless a teacher is using the phones as part of a lesson. If a student violates the policy we issue them a central detention. If the problem persists with a particular student we will issue increase the severity of the consequence for each offense i.e. an extended detention, call home, confiscate the phone until a parent retrieves it, and even in-school suspension. On a few occasions we have told a student and their parents that the student is no longer allowed to bring a cell phone to school. At the school were I work the overwhelming majority of students use their cell phones in a responsible manner and they comply with our policy.