Schools Turn To Cell Phones For Lessons
commentary by Shelby Till | January 23, 2012
Teachers are constantly pressured to find innovative ways to incorporate the technology that children use at home into the classroom. Education technology experts say that because children live in a digital world today, it only makes sense to have schools adapt to using more digital tools in technology as well. With a majority of middle school and high school students using a mobile phone of some sort, schools are beginning to include them in a wide variety of ways.
The Bring Your Own Technology (BYOT) movement is a great way for schools strapped for cash, to bring in new technological advances, without having to spend a fortune. People usually do not realize the number of tools that cell phones can bring into the classroom. They can be a great way for students to respond to quizzes or polling questions, record lectures or discussions for studying, video tape school projects or discussion groups and use the phone's calculator for math problems. For students who have smart phones, they can use a number of educational apps such as Google Earth, and apps that help students find definitions, translations, currency conversions, and measurements. Smart phones also allow students to search the web, use fact time applications and in some cases, even read digital e-books. All of these tools can be added to the classroom, with little, to no cost to the schools.
"I firmly believe that to prepare kids for their future, we need to start speaking the language of kids," says Matt Cook, a math and science teacher in the Keller Independent School District, near Fort Worth, Texas. "They're using this stuff anyway—let's teach them how to use it productively."
A number of teachers who are already using cell phones in the classroom have come up with some of their own ideas on how to integrate them into their lessons. For instance, Teacher Carla Dolman found they worked perfectly for her "lit circles" projects in all of her classes. The project includes having students separate into smaller groups to discuss different characteristics of the specific book they are reading during that time. Before allowing cell phones, Dolman had to monitor each of the groups simultaneously, which proved to be a very challenging task. But students who had video taping capabilities on their phones could record their discussions then Bluetooth it to Dolman's phone, and she could watch each individual discussion, without missing a second of anyone’s discussion. This led to a more accurate grade for each of the students and less stress on Dolman to try to remember what everyone had said.
Another example is English teacher Angie Pidgeon and her experiment with Twitter. Her students used the social media site to respond and ask a number of questions after watching an interview television talk show host Oprah Winfrey did in Auschwitz with Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel. The students were currently reading Wiesel's popular book "Night," in which Wiesel discusses his traumatic experiences that he endured with his father at the Nazi German concentration camps at Auschwitz and Buchenwald. Students will be able to see their peers' responses and questions on a screen set up in the classroom.
"They were all very excited," she said.
Some parents have had their concerns with the use of cell phones in the classroom, especially because not every student has a cell phone, but teachers say that the students without a cell phone just partner up with one who does, which is usually a welcomed idea among the kids. Schools who still limit, or even ban the use of cell phones during the school day due to distractions are also concerned with the technology entering the classroom; however, teachers who are allowing students to use their phones say that they are much more involved and are actually interested in the lesson. Teachers also say that by allowing students to use their cell phones for educational purposes, the number of distractions or misuses of the phones has also gone down.
Escanaba High School has used mobile phones in a completely different manner. For the last two years, the school has used a mass text messaging system to text all of the students and their parents on various updates could use it for emergencies such as a lockdown or a fire. For instance, instead of contacting radio and TV stations to tell families that the schools are closed for a snow day, which costs nearly $500 for a one time use, Principal Doug Leisenring will just send everyone a text message right from his computer or cell phone. The improved system is extremely efficient, completely free for the students and their parents, and only costs the district $40 a month.
"A lot of kids want to get to their phone and let their parents know what's happening. It'd be kind of nice if, at the time we go into a lockdown, we could let the parents know why we're doing it," Leisenring said.
With more and more schools allowing cell phones to be used within the classroom, it looks like we could be seeing a shift in the way schools use technology. Not only is using cell phones cost-effective, but they also open up a number of unique resources that would not be available otherwise. Our children are a digital generation, so why not embrace that and help them become technology savvy?
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