Like it or not, phones have become an essential part of our daily lives. They have even become part of the classroom: students review flashcards on Quizlet, receive grades on X2, and turn in assignments on Google Classroom.
While phones may have helped our learning process, each teacher has a very different point of view about when phones should be used in the classroom. Some members of the faculty see phones as detrimental to learning, and will stop students from focusing on their lessons. Teachers remain divided on what to do with this new technology; should students use these resources during class, or do phones need to be banned?
I asked two teachers what they thought the role of phones in the classroom should be.
Mrs. Binney is an English teacher that believes phones hinder our ability to learn when we are in a classroom setting. She began to think this after she did a cellphone challenge based on the novel Fahrenheit 451, a book with anti-technology views. Her results changed her views on technology today.
“I got really good feedback from the students …I had them write these little blocks. And most of them said they felt a lot more engaged, that they were more aware of their surroundings in the classroom, that they felt they were more social, they weren’t as stressed out.”
After that, she decided that the results were so positive, she would carry out the no phone rule into the next year.
I checked in with Anna Galer, a student in Mrs. Binney’s sophomore LTTH class to see if these results held true.
“I actually love [it]. Although it’s frustrating if I’m in the middle of a conversation over text and I have to stop, it’s great overall. I have no distractions and can really just learn.”
I also talked to Mrs Sharkey, a Spanish teacher at OA.
Her technique regarding phones is a bit different- instead of banning them entirely she allows students to take out their phones occasionally during class to use learning resources.
She has found success using Google Classroom, and Conjugemos, a spanish resource that help students practice grammar, as well as websites that allow students to hear Spanish spoken by native speakers of the language.
She describes the effects of using learning resources that students enjoy in the leaning process.
”There are some resources that the students are really enthusiastic about using because there’s some element of competition to them. It helps them to review before some assessments; for example, before a vocabulary quiz I’ll use Quizlet Live.”
Caroline Botelho, a Spanish 3 student, describes how those resources help her when studying.
“Mrs. Sharkey’s review games make learning fun and give students a new way to learn vocabulary they may struggle with learning the traditional way.”
Each class and teacher has a different idea of how to use technology. Even those these two teachers might not use them in exactly the same way, they each work for their individual subject. It seems that while there might be a variety of methods used to deal with technology, there is no right way to use phones in the classroom.