Using Cellphones in Education

This specific topic struck me immediately because I had actually encountered a teacher in my college career that had actually tried to use this technique. In every other classroom you constantly heard teachers say cell phones are a distraction and they don't want to see them in their class. However, this teacher on the first day of class embraced the use of cell phones in the class. This class was a statistics class (Intro-201). Since students who participated must have had texting he allowed it to be optional so students didn't have to get charged. We were asked to save a number into our phone and he asked us a question, "Are you male or female?" We had 1 minute to send a text 1-male and 2-female in the body of the text. After a minute he refreshed the page and there were our results. Every class period he asked us a question like this and before every exam he had a practice exam where we would go question by question to answer multiple choice questions where our results would show up after we answered. I thought that this was so interesting and never though I could or would be capable of figuring out how he did this.

Using cellphones in education is a very controversial subject. It can act as a huge distraction but I think as a society that is moving completely to technology we must use what our students have to our benefit. There are many weaknesses of this much that have to deal with cell phones acting as a huge distraction. An article in Teaching Today called Cellphones in the Classroom lays out a few points of the problems with cellphones in education listed below...

* Sending friends text messages during class time.
* Sending or receiving test answers.
* Bullying or harassment via unwanted text messaging.
* Taking and distributing inappropriate digital photos of students.



These all are very valid and very true from both onlooking and personal experience. I didn't have the opportunity to use a cell phone in this manner in high school but having it throughout college I have often found myself sending several text messages back and forth to friends and family, and sometime even to people that are in the same class as I. Something that wasn't clearly addressed here that I feel is important to state is that it can also be a large cause of cheating. Whether it be the communication of answers or taking a snapshot of an exam and sending it to someone who is taking the same exam in a few hours it makes cheating very easy and tempting.


However, like I stated previously, I think that as teachers we can't be naive in thinking that cell phones only do us harm and can be used for bad things. We must embrace the use of them in the classrooms as it will only become a larger distraction in the future. At this point in time, our knowledge is so limited in how to use them effectively in a classroom because there are still so many people who believe that there is no place for them in the classroom. That same article Cellphones in the Classroom points out several great ways that cell phones can be used in the classroom effectively.

*Calculators. Although most schools have them in math class, other classes that don't have them on hand for students can benefit from number crunching. For example, social studies students studying elections can quickly determine percentages of electoral votes or other scenarios. Science classrooms can use them to perform calculations related to fieldwork.
*Digital cameras. Not all schools or classrooms are outfitted with digital cameras, although many can benefit from them. For example, students can use them to document a variety of things for multimedia presentations or reports. Field trips can be documented and incorporated into digital travelogues.
*Internet access. Many phones have wireless Internet access, thus opening up a world of possibilities for class use. Science students might conduct fieldwork and submit their observations or data to either an internal or external data gathering site. Students can subscribe to podcasts that you produce or offered by a multitude of other sources.
*Dictionaries. Students in literature and language arts classes can benefit from being able to quickly query the definition of a word. Additionally, students who are English learners especially can benefit from translation dictionaries which are becoming available on cell phones.

These are adaptations of how our phones work today, there is no telling what new 'Apps' or features our phones will have 5 or 10 years down the road. By embracing it now I think we are only bettering ourselves and our students now and preparing for the future.