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October 2010 | Volume 68 | Number 2 Interventions That Work Pages 85-86
William M. Ferriter
At a recent conference, a team of teachers asked me an all-too-common question: How can we get the educators in our building to embrace cell phones as a legitimate tool for learning? The teachers told me cell phones were banned by school policy—and most of their colleagues wouldn't have it any other way.
Sound familiar? Despite the fact that 75 percent of all kids ages 12–17 have cell phones, educators have done their best to aggressively erase this tool from their classrooms. In fact, less than 12 percent of students attend schools where cell phones can be accessed at any time—and almost 70 percent attend schools where cell phones are banned from the classroom.1
Don't get me wrong: Our efforts to control student cell phone use are—at times—noble. Cell phones can be a real disruption to learning when used improperly. With almost 60 percent of teens reporting that they've sent and received text messages and 25 percent reporting that they've made phone calls while in class, the disruptions are real.
But efforts to eliminate cell phone use are also short-sighted, especially in an era when fewer dollars are available for classroom supplies. With a willingness to experiment, teachers might be able to create classrooms where the cell phones currently tucked into students' backpacks function as important tools instead of incessant distractions.
To break down negative attitudes toward cell phones as learning tools in your building, try the following.
1 Lenhart, A., Ling, R., Campbell, S., & Purcell, K. (2010). Teens and mobile phones. Washington, DC: Pew Internet and American Life Project.
William M. Ferriter (@plugusin on Twitter) teaches 6th grade language arts and social studies in Raleigh, North Carolina, and blogs about the teaching life at The Tempered Radical (http://teacherleaders.typepad.com/the_tempered_radical). He is the coauthor of Teaching the iGeneration: Five Easy Ways to Introduce Essential Skills with Web 2.0 Tools (Solution Tree, in press); 919-363-1870; wferriter@hotmail.com.
October 2010Interventions That Work
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