Teach42

Via NSBA’s Daily Weblog:
Cell phones in schools are becoming quite a hot topic. The general feeling seems to be that students can carry them around but that they really aren’t allowed to be used.

Since the events of 9/11, many schools have relaxed their policies to allow students to have them, but require the phones to be turned off during the day. Parents like the idea of being able to get in touch with their children if an emergency arises. But today’s cell phone technology offers text messaging and picture taking features that could lead to cheating and privacy invasion.

However, many people have pointed out that in an era of budget cuts, where technology costs are a huge piece of the budgetary pie, many students are walking around with their own personal devices that can serve as a PDA, provide access to the internet and email, and also work for instant messaging. Wouldn’t schools be foolish not to find a way to take advantage of this?

Teaching Today has an article about some of the positive things cell phones can be used for in an educational environement. They can be used as Digital Cameras (what school really has enough digital cameras to go around?), Dictionaries and as calculators amongst other things. There’s no question that there are issues involved. However, cellphones aren’t going away. We’re quickly approaching the point where in many schools 99% of the students will have a mobile phone or communicator of some sort. We need to be focusing on how to make positive use of them, rather than becoming obsessed with how to prevent use of them.

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