In chapter 2 of our book it talks about cell phones and if they have a place in the classroom. One of the statistics that I found the most surprising was the one that said only 23% of students believe that their schools are doing a good job of preparing them for today's workplace (page 19). Less than 1/4 of the students that leave our schools feel prepared for the world ahead of them, not only that, but the workplaces feel as if the recent graduates are prepared for the demands of the workplace as well. Both of those are hard pills to swallow especially when I am one of those people who is getting ready to enter the workplace. This fact brings up concern that maybe I am not ready for what is ahead of me. But as I sit here and type this blog I am surrounded by a group of high school students who in the last two minutes have talked about something they saw on Facebook and have tried desperately to find phone service so they can send a text message or two. We live in a world where we have endless technology available at our fingertips and it seems like it would be unwise of us to use this resource that we have been given.
Now all these resources must be used responsibly and we must be in charge of teaching our students how to use them in an appropriate it way. One sentence in particular says, "educators recognize the need to lay some ground rules before launching activities supported by cell phone use. They also understand that doing this preliminary work teaches valuable workplace skills in digital literacy and etiquette," (page 18). And i think that statement helps me to put the use of cellphones in the classroom into perspective. As with anything you do in your classroom making sure you teach your students how to use the resources responsibly and that they know there are appropriate and inappropriate uses for the technology that they are working with. If you never express your expectations of use to your students how can they live up to them?
Cell phones have gotten a bad reputation at schools, but I think that given the right setting they can be helpful tools inside of a classroom. The idea that I really appreciated from this chapter was having the students use their cell phone cameras on a field trip to document different parts of it and then to upload those pictures onto a flickr or some type of other online photo album where the whole class can have their photos in one spot. Including cell phones in the classroom is a subject that springs a lot of debate, but I think as the years go on it will become more common in the classroom.
As I mentioned in my post for today's assignment, I think its a little too early to implement or mainstream an instructional strategy that incorporates the cell phone. I can see the advantages of using it in the classroom, but I can also see the disadvantages. I also think that even in a world that is so tech heavy, students need to learn the basics, even if they are against what the standard basics are. An appreciation needs to be developed and that can not occur unless students can see where they are and what they are coming from.
ReplyDeleteThere are a lot of issues around the use of cell phones in classrooms. It will take a while to work through them - if ever it can be done.
ReplyDeleteNevertheless, it is hard to deny the possibilities. Most good things do have negatives. How it all shakes out in the end is hard to predict.
In any case, thanks for your thoughts Julia and Matthew. :-)