Cell-Phones-in-Education

http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2009/01/07/16cellphone.h28.html

New educational uses of cellphones are challenging the "turned off and out of sight" rules that many districts have adopted for student cellphones on campus.

I remember when I was in grade school, no one had cell phones. Ok that was in the 80's and early 90's. Even when I was in high school (class of 97) no one had cell phones, some had pagers. I can remember my aunt had a car phone. It didn't work unless plugged into the cigarette outlet. When going to college, I started seeing more and more cell phones. I didn't get my first cell phone until 2002. Most of the schools claimed that cell phones are a distraction and help students cheat and do drugs. Students can cheat many different ways. One way is using a graphing calculator. I digressed.

A growing number of teachers, carefully navigating district policies and addressing their own concerns, are having students use their personal cellphones to make podcasts, take field notes, and organize their schedules and homework.

And some recent, positive examples of how the phones are being used for academic learning may eventually lead to more nuanced policies. Indeed, more educators are concluding that cellphones may be the only realistic way their schools can offer the 1-to-1 computing experiences that better-funded schools provide with laptops.

"In our district, especially at high school, students have a cellphone on them at all times, just like a pencil—it's an underused tool," said Rosemary Miller, the technology-integration specialist for secondary schools in the Buhler, Kan., public schools. "We don't have a computer for every kid, as some school districts do."

Good for those teachers. They are not afraid of what will happen if they try something new and rewarding to the students. Recently the 7th grade teacher and I redid our 6-8th grade computer curriculum including everyday application of technology. The students love it and are learning a lot more than step by step instructions.

Podcasting and classroom-response systems are among the more than 100 uses of cellphones that educator Liz Kolb has collected, and in some cases invented, for her book Toys to Tools: Connecting Student Cell Phones to Education, published in October.

Bloom's New Taxonomy has creation as the top level of intellectual behavior. Having students create Podcasts is a great way to evaluate the students on any topic you are covering. A quote from an unknown individual once said, "the one who is doing the talking is doing the learning." Student response systems can be very expensive. If every student already has a cell phone, using free websites to create polls is a cheap alternative. Liz Kolb has taken her book and went to the web in her own blog: http://www.cellphonesinlearning.com/, where Liz continues to find new ways to use cell phones in the classroom.

Cellphones with cameras also have great potential for simple data collection. They can enrich fieldwork or field trips by allowing students to snap images of, say, leaves, for later identification. Students also can snap pictures of museum exhibits and placards to fuel classroom discussions.

"Mobile citizen journalism" is another popular trend that schools can harness, Ms. Kolb said, though she did not know of any school newspapers doing it extensively yet. "Schools can definitely set up their own mobile journalism text-messaging numbers," so students who are traveling can phone in reports and images, especially if they find themselves in the midst of breaking news.

The possibilities are endless. http://www.animoto.com has developed an application for I-Phone and I-Pod where you can create short video clips on the go. California Local PBS station is even having a contest http://www.koce.org/filmonthefly/ where your mobile phone will receive a text message with the secret story prompt, along with the "tag" you'll use to identify your video as part of our contest on YouTube. You will only have 20 hours to enter your finish product.

In conclusion, we must use what tools we have. Give a person a pencil and it can become a weapon, but do we ban pencils? How many time you have cut your finger on a piece of paper, but do we ban paper? Why don't we use the tools we have to keep students engaged? No matter what you are using find a way to make it educational and its ok to use with me.