Do cell phones have a place in schools? Can they help build 21st Century learning skills? I can remember a few years ago worrying about cell phones in the school. How as a principal could I control their use? I quickly realized I could not completely control their use. Because guess what, almost every kid has one and if they do not have one now they will have one very soon. So what do we do as teachers? Do we waste our time trying to police them or do we figure out ways to use them in useful ways to promote teaching and learning? Now I am not advocating kids being on their phones during class time but this is a technology I don’t think we are not currently utilizing to support instruction. Can it be used? I recently brought up the topic of cell phone to the Hartman staff. At the time I was just talking off the top of my head and no ideas or tangible thoughts on the subject. But one of the today’s presentations at the k12 Online Conference talks about cell phones in the schools.
Question – As a high school teacher is this a technology that you should look into accessing to communicate with your students and parents? I do not have the answer to that. But at least I think it is something to investigate and consider.
Visit http://k12onlineconference.org/?p=152 to watch the presentation and to visit the website the presenter has set up.
1 response so far ↓
Since I read this post the first time I remembered an analysis I did a couple of years ago on the document “Building an Information Society: A Latin American and Caribbean Perspective by Martin Hilbert and Jorge Katz. : Santiago, Chile: Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) 2003. http://www.eclac.org/publicaciones/xml/2/11672/Contents_Overview.pdf
The concept of an “information society” is a paradigm that is changing the world in which we live. The new ways of creating and disseminating information using digital technologies are driving this transformation. In different sectors of society, the information flows, communications and coordination mechanisms are being digitized. Even though this form of “digital activity” is a global phenomenon, the book pointed out that it has its origins in what are “mature” industrial societies, and the speed at which a society adopts this technology-based paradigm depends much up on the degree of development of that society. However, the authors argue, that “technology is not only the child of development (as it derives from the development process), but is also, to a large extent, its parent (since it is also a tool for development)” (13).
However, a new form of exclusion is emerging simultaneously, known as the “Digital Divide” that can widen the gap between regions and countries as well as between groups within societies. In our schools the digital divide is a reality. Many students don’t have computers at home, and if the do, sometimes don’t have access to the internet.
And here is the part that I like
In order to prevent this situation from happening, the authors examine the “digital opportunities” in which developing countries could have the chance to “leapfrog” over previous obsolete technological advances and incorporate the latest technological solution. And cell phones are one of the leapfrogging opportunities!
In school, students could take advantage of cell-phones as a digital opportunity, if we as educators could understand and use cell-phones as a powerful learning tool.
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