There's some kind of Twitter-like service that is used for teacher-student communication and of course they use email and Google Docs a lot.
My kids have had assignments that involve making a movie and their phone is their video camera.
If the kids want to use a computer, they can (they are all issued ThinkPads that are frankly awful) but I think most kids would prefer to use their phones when they can.
Also, the school has a pretty aggressive filter on the wifi so kids that want to access the internet in the school end up using their phone to get access to the things they need.
just post the assignment online. Not a reason to allow phones in class.
In modern society, a smartphone and plan is as essential for school age children as the clothing you presumably did not make them engage in child labor to buy.
I'm not sure they see it as a lifestyle choice. It's just another thing that they expect kids to have. It's been added to the list of binder, paper, pens, laptop, and gym clothes.
When I protested that I didn't have a video camera, she didn't believe me.
Being a resourceful youngster, I managed to get my hands on a second-hand security camera and interface it with my parent's VCR. I ended up getting a D on the assignment because the resulting video was in black-and-white.
The problem is, that he doesent teach responsible drug use. Which modern phones and the internet basically are. So if you do not show what is appropriate (1 glass of wine) and by example show what you do not (engage in binge drinking) you are not preparing them for the world.
And we all knew how the kid ended up, who never drank a single drink before the class garduated. In diapers in the sickward, after he downed a whole bottle of vodka.
Bad choice: this is losing one opportunity to get them to write something. As a teacher, one should look for every possible occasion to practice writing, especially when it has a purpose.
If anyone's ever been in a secure facility, they have little mail slots, sometimes locking with a key you can take, to store your phone while you go inside. Seems like we could just put one of these in every classroom. That should take care of the liability issue.
It's during freaking breaks. How about let kids be kids for once and stop trying to grope into their personal lives! Why do you need to police their breaks too? How is this not a civil rights issue?
As millenials and gen xers age, they are forgetting they were kids once and are quickly becoming twice the son of hell authoritarians their parents were.
The ability to maintain some sustained attention to a task is a pretty fundamental developmental skill that I - as an educator - am tasked with helping my students develop. Many of my student display a compulsive behavioral need to be on their phones and this has very obvious and immediate impacts on their focus and learning. That's a problem that I don't see being solved at the high school level by casual/cultural policing of behavior during class.
> "Of course, using phones in class is already against school policy, but it will remain and issue until I am able to take a phone away from a student. "
They also noted that using a phone in class is against policy but they have no way to enforce this policy... which is their reason for supporting a ban.
I know it's bad form to object to people downvoting your own comment, so I will do it on the GP's behalf.
It's not about restricting their freedom, it's about health. It's not a "civil rights issue" if you restrict your kids from eating nothing but greasy burgers every day.
They are useful tools, but even outside of school they constantly suck away our attention, and apps are designed for this, the constant distraction needs to be curbed, not their use as a pocket computer.
I'm all for moderation but the kids I have come across in my K-12 experience, if they're not paying attention, are generally pretty bored out of their minds with whatever else is going on in the classroom. Which begs the question; whose fault could that possibly be? The child's or the adult in the room?
Well, the kids are supposed to learn things, not to be entertained.
Sometimes the two can coincide, and it's great and inspiring when it does, but the idea that learning must be an entertaining activity only does a disservice to learning, and hampers the progress of the learners. Sometimes it's just hard practice with no fun, and it's done for the sake of learning, not for giggles.
The kids who wanted to do well always learned the material no matter how boring the material was taught and the kids who didn't want to learn didn't learn a thing even with the most engaging teacher. Teachers can only do so much.
Plenty of schools have random assignment for students yet teacher A's students vastly outperform teacher B's students. Sure, the best student in B is generally better than the worst student in A but they are still generally behind the best in A.
(http://www.centerforpubliceducation.org/Main-Menu/Staffingst...)
I'm very well aware of studies showing that teachers make an impact. That much is obvious. What I'm not aware of is any significant group of schools that regularly use random assignment.
If you mean at the school level, that's a policy choice which is far from universal. However, their are a lot of schools and a meaningful number do random student assignment.
The alternative to school was for girls to help out around the house until they were married off and for boys to either learn their father's trade and then do that for the rest of their lives or get apprenticed off to whoever could take them and then do _that_ for the rest of their lives.
School helps children create a life for themselves. If children don't learn anything there they'll find far fewer paths open to them later on.
I blame the adults.
The kids who are at school because they like to learn don't need a teacher. The other kids should learn to hunt and be strong.
I don't think anyone is suggesting this is the silver bullet, but it's one less distraction towards the goal of getting kids to learn things and also to learn how to learn.
As a high school level teacher, I appreciate the attitude that there are amazing opportunities for learning and skill development with computers. I agree with this wholeheartedly. That said, a majority of my students are addicted to social media (they are teenagers, after all) and cannot self moderate their attention and/or behavior on this issue. They are not, generally, breaking their attention away from class for some other kind of educational outlet (for which I am already fairly lenient when appropriate). They are sending their friends snaps, plays both games, and texting.
Of course, using phones in class is already against school policy, but it will remain and issue until I am able to take a phone away from a student. At a prior school, this was explicitly against policy becuase it was considered a liability issue as phones are expensive personal property that the school did not want to be responsible for them. Additionally, parents give minimal support and/or flip out when it happens. Very few have the willingness to keep their student's phone at home during the school day even when it is a known and acknowledged problem. Often, they simply don't want to argue with their teen about it.
I believe that we - as a American culture - are still too enamoured with our smart phones to effectively acknowledge the potential negative effects they can have on our attention/learning/cognitive development.