TiER1 Blog
Should Cell Phones Be Used In Education? Hall Davidson Thinks They Should
It’s in your pocket: teaching spectacularly with cell phones. Great speech by Hall Davidson from Discovery Education Network about using mobile phones in education, the kind of talk many teachers and administrators need to hear. The first thing Hall said was to take out and turn on our cell phones 
There is a large potential for cell phones in education, but current best practices are small. Mobiles have lots of functionality, including:
- Telephone
- Text messenger
- Still camera
- Video camera
- Video player
- GPS device
- Podcaster
- Music player
Are we really going to ignore a device this powerful? Can we, when it has all kinds of applications for teaching, learning, school-to-home, administration?
In general, we still take cell phones away, and school districts ban them (e.g. during school hours). However, if this is a tool for adults, we need to teach kids how to use it.
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4 Comments for Should Cell Phones Be Used In Education? Hall Davidson Thinks They Should
I totally agree – when my son was in high school at a Christian Private School here in North Dallas (at a large, mega-church, mind you), even though the cell phones were not “allowed” during school, the students still used them extensively to cheat on tests, texting each other the answers. It mad my son mad that they would do that, even though they signed a code of conduct agreement.
Use it in the workplace at conferences for voting or interactive questions from the audience to enhance a presentation, but not for core education. The students need more focus on the teacher and what they are teaching, and the distractions of technology will definitely not help that effort. When MS Windows first came out, I was in college and a co-op employee (half-days) at a very large long distance telecommunication company here in the US. Engineers were trying to justify playing solitaire during working hours as “practice getting comfortable with using a mouse.” Distractions are everywhere, and we as humans will find them. Let’s not hand our kids those technology distractions when they’re already struggling to meet the minimum standards in school.
It sounds like student compliance with school and classroom policity is an issue.
Most schools I’ve heard of with an honor code, make a student who is aware of cheating, but doesn’t report it, guilty of an honor code violation.
One key goal for many students personal development is self-regulation. Simply put, that is the ability to manage distractions and focus on the task at hand. As classroom facilitator, the teacher has a role in instilling this behavior during school time.
In meetings we’ve had with teachers, our school district still has a “no electronic devices in the classroom” policy. However, a naive interpretation of this leads to a ban on even laptop computers, which are useful in the classroom.
Having access to a cell phone during school hours is considered a safety issue by parents. This isn’t going to change. The school must adapt to ubiquitous mobile internet devices, but still set policies that allow enforcement of an “acceptable use policy” during school times. Now that Google has opened up the cell phone as a generally programmable device, these kind of ‘nanny’ applications will be possible.
Perhaps a “school mode”, where text msg reception isn’t allowed except for those originated by the parent and school, would be most helpful. Just don’t expect your wireless carrier to provide it for you, you’ll have to get a developer to build it.
I agree that some studient could quite possible cheat on test and other things but then again if you use it for projects like taking pictures and even call parents for a change of planes they can contact them if you set rules for useing a selfphone in school maby some kides wont follow it but the kides that do arnt the ones getting lose and kide napped because they couldnt call there parents for a change of planes instead the’l be able to call there parents before school ends and tell them whats going to happen with the schedues…
sincerely Garry
Age 13
Born 1994
7th grade
akwmel middle school al
Cell phones should be used in a class because of a calculater