“Mobile phones – A Weapon of Mass Instruction”

Thanks for an interesting and challenging post.

While, in a perfect world, schools should teach their students the proper way to use a cell phone while working, we often have our hands full with other priorities.

As a former teacher and Admin. in a NYC high school in Brooklyn, the safety of our student body must always come first and foremost. Kids fight over what many would consider silly- he bumped me in the hall, she stepped on my sneaker, he kissed my girlfriend, etc. One on one fights between students have occurred for eons. With the advent of cell phones, these altercations can rapidly escalate. Pretty soon, these one on one fights turn into five on ones or ten on eights. Some of these incidents are the parents fighting parents over the actions of their children. I saw this happen on more than occasion. Not only are the students involved with this silliness at risk of being harmed, but the other students watching the chaos are as well. And so are the staff members who have to try to break up this incident. Some of my colleagues have been seriously hurt breaking up fights.

I commend Joel Klein for making this commitment to student safety.

In the proper context, yes. I agree with you. I am not anti-technology, I am anti-”use it everywhere and anywhere,” which often crops up among folks who think technology is the solution for everything.

“Students are struggling to “sit tight and pay attention” because their instructors are BORING THEM TO DEATH. If you came from a land of multimedia, interactive, engaging material (READ: the 21st century) and were occasionally trapped in an environment where there is limited to no interaction, a guy or gal talking for 40 minutes straight and a whiteboard and pen combination for “rich media content” (READ: most schools today) you too would be BORED TO DEATH.”

Unfortunately, the reality is that people do indeed need to learn to “sit tight and pay attention,” much as you seem to loathe the idea. I understand that this can be boring – I do. But – not everything can be accomplished with group work. Not everything can be accomplished (nor should it) in digital and flashy fashion. An explanation of mathematical theorems is *always* going to be dry and boring (apologies to mathematicians). While you can make some of the real world applications of these things sound interesting (say, the mechanics of an oil rig), eventually you need to move to the actual theorem and away from the more “interesting” stuff that actually captures attention.

Paying attention is an underrated skill. In the real world, depending on your job, you often have to attend seminars, uninteresting meetings, and various other events where whipping out a cell phone – however unobtrusively – is considered at best rude and inappropriate. Nor am I of the “old school fuddy duddies” – I’m 28. I work in an active and lively place where we use technology often – as appropriate. However, I can also sit and read or study for a number of hours at a time – textbooks may not be as interactive as you’d like, but they are still required reading, and students who have not had their attention spans cultivated in their younger years struggle mightily with this once they get to college.

My argument is less about policing cell phones than about the fact that what usually ends up happening is that not only knowledge content is lost when you emphasize the flashy technology and the interactivity, but necessary study and reading skills – like the stamina to sit and study – are lost when all we do is train their minds that it’s okay to be attention-deficit. And horrible as it may sound, high school students need to learn certain skills before they can succeed in college, and learning to deal with the fact that not everything can be interactive group work using iPhones is one of those things.

I teach technology in a high school environment. I advocate that cell phones could be a tool for education just as easily as they can be as a tool for mischief and distraction. The funny part is unless you can watch 24-32 individuals and what their hands are doing throughout a 50 minute period than you have yet to realize the kids are using their phones anyhow. Most of them can “touch-text” one-handed and without looking at the phone except to read responses.

Students are struggling to “sit tight and pay attention” because their instructors are BORING THEM TO DEATH. If you came from a land of multimedia, interactive, engaging material (READ: the 21st century) and were occasionally trapped in an environment where there is limited to no interaction, a guy or gal talking for 40 minutes straight and a whiteboard and pen combination for “rich media content” (READ: most schools today) you too would be BORED TO DEATH.

And the biggest problem is that the vast majority of Education instruction teaches the new teachers to teach the OLD ways. We continue to force today’s learner to conform to a teaching environment that has become dated, unengaged, and spends too much time on CONTENT and STANDARDS instead of CREATIVE THOUGHT and INVENTING SOLUTIONS. If I need to know almanac information I can look it up at home, on my iPhone, or even phone a friend. The synthesis of knowledge is the ultimate goal, not the ability to recite facts.

What do you learn by sitting on your rear end and listening and taking notes? What job does that prepare you for in the real world? I suppose the author would kick out calculators, word processing, and other “devices” that are really used in the REAL world.

Besides, you make a cell phone, iPod, iPhone, or other “device” a teaching tool, most educators I have encountered can suck the fun right out of those devices to the point where students would leave them at home to avoid having to use them, (just like they do their pens, pencils, and calculators where I teach).

P.S. — I have news for you, they are all open cell phone tests, teachers just don’t know it.