Last week I was fortunate enough to attend a lecture in my EDCI 336 class from Jesse Miller on Privacy, Safety, Bullying, and Consent. Although there were some things I already knew and expected being the daughter of two teachers, there were a few important things he talked about that really resonated. On Wednesdays, when I go to a high school for observation, I have noticed that almost all the students have a cell phone. This is very different from my old high school where in the past few years they have actually banned cell phones from the classroom. As a teacher I have always thought that I would ban cell phones in my classroom, this is what I had seen from my previous high school and it helped keep all of the students focus more. But after going and observing multiple different classrooms I have realized that they also can be a tool. While some students still use them to be off task and it is a constant battle when allowing them in the classroom Jesse Miller made a very good point that by taking away a phone immediately shows the student that you don’t trust them. Yes there may be some students off task and you may have to battle with them a bit to stay off their phones and focus and stay on task but some teachers have demonstrated that they can be great tools and are another literacy that can be used in the classroom. It also allows you to connect more with students as some of the teachers have voiced they use it to “break the ice” and it helps them build relationships with students when you try a new app they are all using for example.

When looking up the pros and cons of cell phone use in the classroom I have found quite a few similarities between the sites I say. For the cons, most said it could allow for cyber bulling, it could be a distraction, it could allow for cheating, and it could allow for inappropriate material to be shared. For the pros, it allows students to access a wealth of information, it allows them to use multiliteracies in the classroom and allows for resources to be used by the teacher, and there are many useful apps that can be used to by students and teachers in the classroom. One that I have found is Flipd. It is a tool that helps student organize their time and tries to make sure they are more productive. Another app that my old chemistry teacher used to use in her classroom was called Forest App. When the app was open you would set a certain amount of time you wanted to focus and not look at your phone and if you successfully avoided your phone you would grow a tree but if you opened your phone before the time was finished your tree would die. Not only do you grow a virtual forest but they are partnered with a real tree-planting organization and when you spend virtual coins they go towards planting trees. The teacher would bring up this app and say she needed the class to work for 30 minutes and if she didn’t feel the students were on task she would open her phone and kill the tree. The students were actually fairly motivated to make sure their tree grew.

While cell phones can be highly motivating and highly useful they also need to be used correctly. As I begin my teacher career there are a number of resources I will be using to guide me through privacy and safety. A few are as follows:

As an educator I understand I must uphold and abide by these rules and I will protect not only myself and my students but also my fellow educators and my students’ families. I am very excited to start my career as an educator and I hope I can not only empower students but also insure they feel safe.

Photo taken by Tommy Lee Walker on unsplash