On Cell Phones in Classrooms

Poster currently in several classrooms in my district

In the spring, I held an after-school workshop titled "Classroom Management in the Age of BYOD". My intent was for teachers to discuss and share some ideas about successful management strategies in classes where students are using their own cell phones, tablets, or laptops on a regular basis. The workshop went in an unexpected (to me) direction when it became apparent that most of the teachers there were more interested in learning how to ban cell phones and prevent their students from using them. We had suggestions ranging from "collect them at the door" to "email all parents asking them to keep the devices at home" to "remove the wi-fi from all classrooms in the district". I left discouraged.

I once had a ban on cell phones in my classroom. I had a poster similar to the one shown here. That was about 15 years ago, when phones were simply phones, and their use in public places was a novelty. Every few days, one of my students' phones would ring during class, because they weren't used to silencing them. Most of the students' phones resembled the cartoons in this poster. I had to teach them about appropriate and inappropriate times to have their phones' ringers on.

Photo by Flikr user "Images Money", CC-BY 2.0

Do I have to state the obvious? What (most) students carry around in their pockets has as much resemblance to a cell phone from the early 2000's as my laptop computer does with a bakelite rotary dial phone. Most people, including students, are accustomed to silencing ringers and notifications at the appropriate times. What they are not necessarily used to, however, is using their powerful pocket computers for learning and research in addition to socializing and games. This is because we haven't taught them how to do that. And we can't teach them how to use their phones for productive work if we confiscate them on entrance or on sight.

Which brings us to the recurrent hand-wringing article or blog post like this one from Edutopia in June. For all the concern about teachers being "tired of seeing students text each other" and "text language and spelling that creeps into student assignments", there is precious little in this article actually concerned with student learning. The author writes about "the best thing you could do for yourself", "you have to enforce it", "[e]very teacher's tolerance... varies". The closest the author gets to addressing instruction and student learning is a throw-away line:

Perhaps the most important element is minimal downtime in your learning activities, because the temptation to sneak a look is just too strong. 

The comments on the article continue in a similar vein: students are just too distracted by their phones, and need to focus and concentrate on what the teacher is presenting. This is decidedly not a student-centered mindset.

Fortunately, there are educators who recognize that these pocket computers (a) are not going away any time soon, (b) are only going to get more powerful, useful, and widespread, and (c) will be a crucial part of our students' jobs and lives, even more than they are today. Exhibit A, from 2010 (!) by Doug Johnson in ISTE's Learning and Leading with Technology. (Thanks to Chris Ratican on Twitter for the link.) Exhibit B, from Katie Martin, Director of Professional Learning at the University of San Diego. Exhibit C, from Lisa Nielsen, in Tech & Learning.

We cannot simply pretend that powerful pocket computers don't exist or are not going to be important to our students in their futures. We have to teach students how to use them for productive learning. Doing otherwise, in 2015, is educational malpractice.

UPDATE: As if on cue, here's this article from CBCNews: "Smartphones in the classroom: a teacher's dream or nightmare?" It's actually a fairly reasonable article except for this key quote:

But what about the distraction? Surely kids with a cellphone or tablet in front of them will stop focusing on a lecture and start Facebooking or online chatting?

As they should! Just as adults do in a meeting during a boring, irrelevant lecture or presentation. Our teaching methods and strategies have got to match up with students' needs. If you're trying to lecture to high school students, don't be surprised to see them tune you out, whether it's with their phone or by doodling or just by daydreaming.

ANOTHER UPDATE 12/6/2015: Here's another one, from NPR in November: How to Get Students to Stop Using Their Cell Phones in Class. As Julie Smith (@julnilsmith) points out on Twitter, the comments are terrifying. There is one comment I like, however, from user616828: "The 1950s called, they want their pedagogy back."