Yesterday, I was contemplating if there was a possibly positive use of cell phones in the classroom. We are familiar with the difficulty of banning cell phones from a classroom, and children are getting them at younger and younger ages. If they must be in the classroom, why not put the potential distraction to use?
What if we could use cell phones like "clickers" in the SMARTboard testing program? It wouldn't be 100% effective, since not every student has a classroom, but if we had a class Twitter that students could tweet answers to from their phones, or a class iPhone that could keep track of all the answers, that would be a good use for the potential distraction!
Another potential issue is the ethics of the situation: would students cheat? Probably. Again, it's not a perfect system or a thing we should implement right away, just a thought. :) Thankfully I have a year to get it ready before I teach. Haha.
Love reading your posts, your personality really comes out in every single one! I love the idea of finding a way to put the distraction to use in the classroom, if students are going to play with it anyway. I don't know if you ever watch at all, but there is a new samsung phone the notepad or something like that. Anyway the commercial actually promotes it as a classroom tool! I thought it was very interesting that technology is evolving and its necessary to be promoted as an educational aid. Check it out:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78-s1HNgUAQ
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