Love this article. My students have been writing a persusivve writing piece
about the use of cell phones in school. We came across this article! What do
you think?
Cell phones becoming teaching tool
Educators start integrating device into class lessons
*
Christine Armario
Associated Pres*
WESLEY CHAPEL, Fla. — Ariana Leonard’s high school students shuffled in
their seats, eagerly awaiting a cue from their Spanish teacher that the
assignment would begin.
“Take out your cell phones,” she said in Spanish.
The teens pulled out an array of colorful flip phones, iPhones and
SideKicks. They divided into groups and Leonard began sending them text
messages in Spanish: Find something green. Go to the cafeteria. Take a
picture with the school secretary.
Leonard’s class at Wiregrass Ranch High School in Wesley Chapel, a
middle-class Florida suburb about 30 miles north of Tampa, is one of a
growing number around the country that are abandoning traditional policies
of cell phone prohibition and incorporating them into class lessons. Spanish
vocabulary becomes a digital scavenger hunt. Notes are copied with a cell
phone camera. Text messages serve as homework reminders.
“I can use my cell phone for all these things, why can’t I use it for
learning purposes?” Leonard said. “Giving them something, a mobile device,
that they use every day for fun, giving them another avenue to learn outside
of the classroom with that.”
*'More motivated'*
Much more attention has gone to the ways students might use phones to cheat
or take inappropriate pictures. But as the technology becomes cheaper, more
advanced and more ingrained in students’ lives that mentality is changing.
“It really is taking advantage of the love affair that kids have with
technology today,” said Dan Domevech, executive director of the nonprofit
American Association of School Administrators. “The kids are much more
motivated to use their cell phone in an educational manner.”
Today’s phones are the equivalent of small computers — able to check e-mail,
do Internet searches and record podcasts. Meanwhile, most school districts
can’t afford a computer for every student.
“Because there’s so much in the media about banning cell phones and how
negative phones can be, a lot of people just haven’t considered there could
be positive, educative ways to use cell phones,” said Liz Kolb, author of
“From Toy to Tool: Cell Phones in Learning.”
Even districts with tough anti-use policies acknowledge they will eventually
need to change.
“We can’t get away from it,” said Bill Husfelt, superintendent of Bay County
District Schools, a Florida Panhandle district of 27,000 students where cell
phones aren’t allowed in school, period. “But we’ve got to do a lot more
work in trying to figure out how to stop the bad things from happening.”
*Hassle to seize*
Seventy-one percent of teens had a cell phone by early 2008, according to a
survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project. That percentage remains
relatively steady regardles of race, income or other demographic factors.
Meanwhile, many schools are low-tech compared with homes outfitted with home
networks, wireless Internet and a smartphone for every family member.
Most schools still have prohibitive policies curtailing cell phone use —
often with good reason. At Husfelt’s district, seven students were recently
arrested after they got into a fight on campus that he says was instigated
through text messages.
In other parts of the country, teens have been arrested for “sexting” —
sending indecent photographs taken and sent through their cell phones.
Students also use the devices to cheat: In one poll, more than 35 percent of
teens admitted cheating with a cell phone.
But phones are so common now that seizing them is huge hassle for teachers.
“It’s just a conflict taking them up and having to deal with them,” Husfelt
said. “It’s too disruptive.”
------------------------------
Tena
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