We recently had a guest speaker in our technology class to talk to us about cell phone use in classrooms. Before this session, we read an interview transcript and excerpts from her blog, and I thought it sounded way too idealistic. Students are on their phones all day long, and it takes some special skill to have them put down the phones and pay attention, and now she wanted to have them continue to use their phones and learn? It just sounded silly.
Her presentation to us during class made her out to be a little less idealistic about using cell phones in class, especially since she was having students complete surveys or do polls on their phones. To tackle the issue of student distraction, she asked all students to put their phones face down on the top right hand corner of their desks, and to close all laptops.
She had several activities for use on our phones, but overall it was all about using cell phones to answer survey questions. The only difference was how long the surveys were. She also mentioned logging into virtual classrooms using smartphones, but we logged into the classroom using our computers instead. Virtual classrooms, while a good idea, may not work on smartphone/tablet as well as they do on the computer, even if there is an app specifically designed for phone or tablet.
I'm sure that there are plenty of teaching tools one can do on a cell, but I remained unimpressed by her talk. It just seemed like using it to poll students on their opinions, not necessarily to help them learn more. And until I see evidence that students are learning when they're whipping out their phones to do these silly surveys, I remain skeptical.
3 comments:
Your blog about our guest presenter caught my attention. Her blog discussed a plethora of tech tool usage in her classroom and I felt it had overwhelmed the quality of the curriculum. The ability to use tech to enhance content presentation and help engage students would be beneficial, but if the usage is to sell the tool, I’ll pass. Classroom environment and local culture have a huge impact on the ability to encourage students to use their own tech, too. My current field placement would not benefit from such an idea. Perhaps the future will offer different opportunities and the exposure to successful possibilities will be worth referencing as a resource. In the meantime, her suggestion to place cell phones on the upper corner of students’ desks can be used. Her comment that it is much harder to subtly text from that location than from pockets and backpacks under the desks was a good point. Any tip to reduce the cell phone distractions during lessons will be helpful to me! Thank you for sharing your thoughts!
I share similar feelings, I do not know how beneficial using a cell phone would be in a classroom. I am at a middle school and many of my students do not have cell phones. I wouldn't want students to use them if not every individual had one. I also think that cell phones can be a distraction is students try to sneak messaging. I have heard other students in the cohort explain that they would give cell breaks as a way to let students use their phone and come back to the lesson. I feel that may be plausible in certain contexts but again, I am not sure how such strategies effects students because I have not seen it in practice before. I personally do not believe I would allow students to use cell phones in my class but I may change my mind depending on the context.
I agree with you that there is a certain level of idealism with much of what we learn in this program and in her presentation specifically. We have to somehow find balance between idealism and reality. It’s hard to figure out. Inevitably though, we have to experiment and see what works in our future classrooms. I think cell phones are a double-edged sword. They can be an incredibly useful tool or toy.
I thought the surveys were fine, but there should be other uses as well like you mentioned. It shouldn’t just be to poll opinion. Altogether, the cell phone issue is just difficult to deal with. I think fighting against cell phones in the classroom is futile. It comes down to teaching self-responsibility. We need to find ways to be creative with technology. That’s easy said than done though. In any case, I use my phone all the time in class currently. Am I any better than a high school student?
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