Technology In Class

Cell Phones as Educational Technology

Most schools have a school-wide policy forbidding cell phone usage except for designated areas. These bans most likely came about so that cell phones would not ring in class, students would not text in class, and so that students could not invent and implement creative ways of cheating.

But is a school-wide prohibition on cell phones necessary?  Couldn’t there be a time and place in class to use cell phones as an educational tool?

First of all, just about every student has a cell phone.  Not every student brings their cell phone to school because they may be afraid that it will be taken away.  But think of the educational possibilities of 90% of your students having access to a cell phone in class.  They don’t have a cell phone?  Any teacher could acquire some old cell phones for classroom use from the thrift store.  Among students cell phones are more common than laptops.  Often it’s redundant for students to carry a laptop or a netbook in lieu of a cell phone, especially if their main needs are the Internet.

Second, Math, Chemistry and Physics teachers should especially push for cell phone usage in their classrooms.  Each cell phone has a calculator.  Students could save a lot of money if they used their cell phones instead of a calculator.  There are plenty of free scientific calculator apps to choose from.

Third, English teachers can assign texting or twittering as creative writing.  Don Tapscott tells the story about the Japanese student named Rin who wrote an entire novel via texting.  She texted parts of it each day until after six months she had a best-selling novel on her hands.  Texting and twittering will not replace standard essays, but students need to be better than competent at making a point in a short space as communication becomes quicker and more frequent.

Lastly, Internet.  I don’t think there are cell phones being sold today that don’t have Internet access.  If appropriate cell phone use is allowed in class students could look up any information any time.  If we start reading Moby Dick in class and I give a short presentation on Melville in order to contextualize the story, students could contribute to the discussion right then and there.  They’re empowered with information at their fingertips.  They’ll learn to dig out the best and most credible information available to them and contribute to the discussion.  They can provide valuable facts and we can then discuss those facts as a class.  While reading the book we can talk about gnosticism and someone will most likely find an article on Melville’s gnostic tendencies before I could even make the suggestion.

I’m not even scratching the surface of the myriad ways cell phones can be used in class.

Some questions:

• What is your school’s policy on cell phone usage?
• Would you need special permission in order to use cell phones as educational technology?
• If you could use cell phones in your class, or if you do, in what ways do you use them?
• In what ways can the cell phone camera be used as an educational tool?

Related posts:

1. Internet or no Internet? Two Schools Approach Educational Technology
2. Is Internet Access a Basic Human Right?
3. It’s a Small Screen Revolution!
4. Computer Literacy is Literacy
5. Does Technology Promote Aliteracy?