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."

To "E" or Not To "E" - Teens and Reading

Adrienne St. George is our district's Media Center Specialist. She contributes this guest post on teens and reading, although she would like to state for the record that she had nothing to do with the terrible headline of this post. You can contact her at adrienne.stgeorge@sduhsd.net.



Teens are reading more than ever!!! No, that is not a line from a science fiction story; that is a very current consensus by reputable research groups and interested critics.

Teens' reading efforts match/exceed adult levels:
16 – 29 age groups actually read MORE than the 30+ age group. A lot of this is due to reading that is necessary for school but personal reading numbers are equal for both age groups which is awesome news! Teens/young adults will read on any device available while the 30+ age group prefers an e-reader or print.

Teens/adults use libraries differently than adults. Statistics show that they actually use libraries MORE than adults. However, they use them for book recommendations, getting help with apps and digital questions, e-books, online information, and online classes. The general consensus of teens/young adults is that all library services should be online. When asked about the future of public libraries, teens and young adults don’t think that libraries, as a physical entity, will have a strong impact on their community. They DO, however, want to be able to access all of the public library digital resources.

When asked about a preference in reading print or a digital format, youngsters (0 -8) tend to lean to print, as that is what they are familiar with when parents read to them. Parents are in full support of print for the 0 – 8 age groups for reading because that is what they grew up with and are familiar with. From age 10 on, most parents are not as concerned with the version of a book; they just want their kids to read! Some of the reasons given by parents for the huge rise in digital reading in teens since 2011:

• I read e-books and that’s what my kids see. If I am modeling this behavior, I need to allow them the same option.
• E-books are available right away. Being able to satisfy an interest in a book right away is important.
• There is a wide selection of e-books.
• E-readers are affordable, some are even free.
• E-books are easy for long travel, on the way to school or in bed.
• If an e-book will get my kids to read, then they can read an e-book!

The bottom line is that reading, as a whole, is on the rise. Statistics show that e-books have been instrumental in saving the publishing industry... just like Burton pretty much saved the skiing industry with the very “nasty” snowboard! (Sorry I can’t back that up officially but who cares as long as there is a mountain covered with sierra cement to ride?!)  Many say that e-books have contributed to the resurrection of reading, but who cares as long as everyone is enjoying a book in whatever format they prefer?




Book Revenues are Up, by Kelsey McKinney on June 27, 2014, Vox Media
Children, Teens and Reading, Common Sense Media Research Brief, 2014
E-books vs Print: What Parents Need to Know, by Jenny Deam, Parent and Child/Scholastic, 2014
E-book Revolution: We’re Reading More than Ever!, by Husna Haq, Christian Science Monitor, April, 2012
Zero to Eight, Children’s Media Use in America 2013, Common Sense Media Research

Pew Reports:
A Snapshot of Reading in America in 2013
Digital Age Reading, Writing, Research
E-reading Rises in 2014
The Rise of E-reading

Teens, Tech, and Trends

Adrienne St. George is our district's Media Center Specialist. She contributes this guest post on teens and technology. You can contact her at adrienne.stgeorge@sduhsd.net.

Technology is NOT going away! That’s not a news flash, is it? The real news is that as the use and acceptance of technology expands, so do the skills of the users, especially those in the 16 – 29 age groups.

Recent reports from PEW, Common Sense Media, and other research centers, show that the use of technology as a whole is increasing dramatically from ages 0 – 60+ with very encouraging trends. The surges of use and skill vary for different age groups and for different end goals.

With the focus on teens and young adults, the research results are amazing. Referred to as millennials, access to media devices for this group has exploded in the past 2 - 3 years. Usage of media devices has more than doubled in that time. Average time of use on a device has tripled in that same time frame. Traditional screen media such as TV, DVD, video games has decreased significantly. TV is still a dominant venue but is now viewed through a DVR, is streamed or viewed from “on demand”. Access to devices is becoming more equitable to all socioeconomic groups. Smartphones are the devices that are used the most.

Why a mobile device? Why a smart phone? Reasons given to researchers:

• Always with us 
• Instant information and accessibility anytime/anywhere 
• Fingertip action 
• Timely info 
• Location sensitive 
• Instant feedback 
• Ability to create our own info and share 

Summary of research:

Teens live in a different information ecosystem:
“There is no playbook for this new environment” (13 Things to know about Teens and Technology, Pew Project, July 23, 2014.) Teens are not aliens but they are different because they are tied to technology. Technology saturates their lives. Teens are becoming a network of information. Information is another skin…natural, ubiquitous, portable, immediate, timeless, participatory, connected and social. More than 95% of all surveyed have broadband at home, more than 70% have access to the Internet on a mobile device, 78% at least have a cell phone (close to 50% have smartphones), 81% use social networking. End result: data and info is a third skin…it is just normal.

Teens live in a different learning ecosystem:
The surveyed College Board and NWP teachers agreed that although technologies are creating a somewhat distracted generation, the internet and digital tools have had a very positive impact on student research. These same teachers strongly believe that the Internet gives students a much wider range of resources than traditional resources. Students know how to access the Internet, use search engines and find information easily. They all agree that while students are very self-sufficient researchers, they believe that a lot of the information found is overwhelming and difficult for students to understand. However, they believe that this is a common problem with traditional research as well. Their main concern for students is the inability to discern bias and validity. Traditional resources were usually considered “pre-validated”. Now students must learn how to validate sources themselves. This is where teachers come in. The surveyed teachers strongly believe that digital literacy needs to be incorporated in daily lesson plans. These teachers stated that exposing students to and teaching them how to use digital resources other than the top three used (Google, Wikipedia and YouTube) would expand research skills, learning and knowledge to even higher levels.

Learning should be a process, rather than an assignment. Teens/young adults create knowledge, rather than receive knowledge. Knowledge is interactive, rather than transmitted in static structures. Learning is active with the learner managing his/her own learning process, rather than passive with the learner just listening and watching.

Overall consensus:
Teens/young adults are wired differently and lead very functional hyper-connected lives. Teens are able to handle multitasking seamlessly. Adults claim multitasking skills, yet they are aware of the different tasks they try to accomplish simultaneously, while it is effortlessly integrated in millennials. Multitasking for adults is clunky and obvious; multitasking for the under 30 age group, is fluid and natural.

The majority of survey participants strongly predict that the future, as soon as 2020, is positive for millennials. Millennials will be able to problem solve quickly and efficiently through cooperative work; they will be able to effectively search for information online, discern the quality and veracity, then communicate the findings; they will be able to synthesize and collect details from many sources into a final suggestion/solution; they will have the ability to distinguish between “noise” and the real information in forever growing amounts of data.

I've always been fascinated by what teens/young adults are capable of doing with phones, with tablets, with all of their devices for school and for fun. Teens today are bright and savvy; they want to be challenged. They want to try to do everything on their devices especially if people tell them it is not possible. It is so nice to hear clear optimism from so many reliable sources that teens really are capable of using technology successfully for learning and probably in ways adults never imagined.




More Teens Use Smart Phones to get Online, eSchool News, 3, 2013
Zero to Eight, Children’s Media Use in America 2013, Common Sense Media Research

Pew Reports:
5 Media Spaces Where People Live
Digital Age Reading, Writing, Research
Teens and Libraries in Today’s Digital World
13 Things to Know about Teens and Technology
Teens and Technology 2013

Project Tomorrow Report from 2012 Survey

Last month, Project Tomorrow released their report from the nationwide Speak Up Survey of educators and parents.  Titled "From Chalkboard to Tablets: The Digital Conversion of the K-12 Classroom", the report is available for download from the Project Tomorrow website.  The report is only 17 pages long and well worth reading in its entirety, but I want to highlight a few points that jumped out at me.

The report lists five "transformative factors" that are increasing the demand for digital tools and resources within classroom instruction:

1. The influence of the Common Core State Standards movement;
2. Increasing use of mobile technologies by teachers, administrators, and parents;
3. Stagnation in ed-tech funding is leading to a search for innovative, low-cost strategies;
4. Digital tools and resources are becoming more common outside of the classroom;
5. Pressure from employers for better skilled employees.

I found the third of these factors confounding, initially.  Why would continued stagnation in ed-tech funding lead to increased demand for digital tools and resources?  Their explanation is that many districts have abandoned plans that were developed in the days of more abundant funding and held on to in the hopes that budgets would increase soon.  Recognition that technology funding is still insufficient and will be for quite some time is causing districts to re-think old plans and search for new ones.  The example they give is administrators' attitudes toward bring-your-own-device (BYOD) policies.

"When asked in 2010 if they would allow their students to use their own devices at school for academic purposes, only 22 percent of principals said that was likely, 63 percent said it was unlikely for their school. In 2012, we see proof of this mobile device style digital conversion happening right from the principal’s office. Today, over a third of principals (36 percent) say that a new Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) to school policy for students is likely. The opposing view has now dropped to 41 percent. At the district level, an even more dramatic shift has taken place in the views of administrators on these BYOD policies. In 2011, 52 percent of district administrators said that they did not allow students to use their own mobile devices at school. This year, only 35 percent are still holding on to that district wide policy statement, with 32 percent saying that the use of student owned devices should be at the discretion of the classroom teacher." (Page 8)

The 2012 survey also asked about teachers' use of digital content in their classrooms.  One interesting result is that middle- and high-school math and science teachers have a much greater use of items such as online curricula, animations, digital textbooks, videos, virtual labs, and simulations.  While there are many reasons for this difference, it parallels a greater adoptions of "flipped" learning strategies among that same group of teachers.  The report calls middle- and high-school math and science teachers "the new pace cars" for the adoption of digital content.

Finally, a chart that needs almost no explanation:

Life Science and Environmental Science Mobile Apps

The March/April edition of ISTE's journal Learning and Leading with Technology includes a list of several mobile apps that might be appropriate for middle school life science or high school environmental science.  These are mostly fieldwork and outdoor observation apps; some of them are designed specifically for kids, but others are part of collaborative "crowd-sourced" observations to aid researchers.  All of the apps listed here are completely free.

Available for iOS and Android:

• iNaturalist
• Journey North
• Project Noah
• What's Invasive

Available for iOS only:

• Leaf Snap
• Nature Tap
• Creek Watch