Have you ever been surprised when you have watched a young child pick up a friend's cell phone and intuitively use all of its functions? YouTube is filled with videos of adorable 2-year-olds using many of the features of an iPhone. You can watch the children gleefully zip their little fingers across the touch screen to take pictures, send e-mail, watch videos, and make calls. These images will either generate warm, fuzzy feelings or conjure up scary thoughts. You may even believe that these devices have no place in our classrooms.
The need to maintain control of the traditional classroom has led many school districts to ban a wide range of powerful tools that could be used for learning. It is not unusual to have cell phones, iPods, blogging sites, wikis, and free global communication tools such as Skype forbidden within a school. Either the list of forbidden resources will grow as new, powerful, easy-to-use tools are invented, or it will disappear as we learn to co-opt these devices for learning.
Rethinking Control in Our Classrooms
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