Beware the Cell Phone
New York City’s proposed cell phone lockers highlight how schools may be missing an opportunity: instead of banning and charging students to stow phones, we could be teaching them to use mobile devices as learning tools. As mobile social networking grows and phones become powerful platforms worldwide, especially through SMS, schools need to experiment with ways to leverage the devices already in students’ pockets.
eSchoolNews has an article about New York City schools considering a plan to have students stow their cell phones in a locker on their way into school. New York City school officials are taking some heat for a proposed solution to the city’s controversial ban on student cell phones in schools. The proposal would have students leave their cell phones in special lockers outside their schools, and students likely would pay 25 or 50 cents to use the lockers each day.
Um, yeah. That’ll work. Not only take away the tools with which most teens communicate and learn, but charge them for the privilege of not having them. How about this…put a locker at the door for them to stow all their textbooks, let the cell phones inside and teach them how to use them to access all the info that’s in the books.
And Tom Hoffman (who is in the lead for most posts of 2007) writes about danah boyd’s predictions about social networking. In the snip Tom pulls out, danah says: I believe that teenagers are the reason that mobile will happen sooner than we think…I think that mobile social network-driven systems will look very different than web-based ones but the fundamentals of “friends” and “messages” and some form of presence-conveying “profile” will be core to the system.
If we read the whole post, however, we see that danah is steeling herself for some “blood baths” this year involving “hyper-visible examples of bad teen behavior.” This is part of our worry too, that instead of looking at these incidents as a call to educate our students to use these tools more effectively, they will be fodder for schools to simply clamp down even more. Part of why we think this will get worse before it gets better.
But on the cell phone as social networking tool idea, Tom follows up with some interesting thinking about why this might be a good thing: Having kids’ social networking move onto their phones would be good for schools. Students not using school computers and the school network for this stuff will cut liability concerns and filtering paranoia. Plus it just seems like a better fit for the role cellphones play in kids’ lives.
We wonder, however, if that wouldn’t then really necessitate schools having kids check their phones at the door.
Finally, we find this snip from the Economist Magazine’s “The World in 2007” issue (as blogged by Smart Mobs): Internet-capable mobile phones will be revolutionary, at least for those who can read and have the money to buy data bundles. The humble SMS will have an even greater effect on East Africa in 2007. Innovative uses of SMS will allow people to move money by text messages; to receive information on, say, maize prices, along with tips on planting; and to recieve medical advice, a particular benefit to those living with tuberculosis or AIDS.
It’s becoming clearer and clearer to us that the convergence of all of this will fit in our pockets. It has to. The culture is demanding mobile computing, and it’s being driven by our kids. And we think we need to start looking at ways to leverage that ability.
Where to start? Experiment. A first step might be to go to Mogopop and put together a lesson that can upload to an iPod. Not a phone, we know, but that ability will be here sooner than we think. It’s an easy way of getting our heads around how it might play out. Any other ideas?
(Photo “Penguin Cell” by Pepewk.)
About the author
Weblogg-ed Team — The Weblogg-ed Team is the collective byline behind our editorial coverage. We write about teaching, learning, and the institutions around them as technology and students keep moving faster than the systems built to serve them. Our work covers classroom practice, edtech and AI tools, online learning, homeschooling, digital literacy, and higher education, written for teachers, school leaders, parents, and lifelong learners who want clearer thinking than the press releases provide.
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