Using Cell Phones in the Classroom: Good Idea or Bad? Blog #7

When I began teaching ten years ago, most families had at least one cell phone and a few students had them as well.  School policy was that they were not allowed at school.  In the intervening time, the number of students with cell phones has grown exponentially.  Now you'd be hard pressed to find a student that doesn't carry a cell phone with them.  Most districts, in the wake of events like Columbine, have accepted that it is okay for students to carry cell phones as long as they are off or don't cause a distraction.  However, a new monster has reared its head and has some administrators fuming; the smart phone.

Smart phones are a hybrid computer and phone.  They allow students to access websites and content like never before.  Students can also take pictures, record video, and upload them onto Facebook or YouTube.  This creates many potential problems for schools.  For example, my school went into lockdown one day.  No one knew why, but a girl pulled her phone out and posted it to Facebook.  This caused a panic among parents who spread the news.  Things got worse when these panicked parents arrived to pull their kids out of school and had to be told they couldn't because we were in lockdown. 

But, can cell phones or smart phones be used to help bring new technology and new methods of teaching to schools?  Even with regular phones, it is extremely easy for teachers to set up a  twitter feed to make announcements and reminders.  Students can subscribe with their cell phones.  Now if the teacher wants to send out a reminder about homework, all he or she has to do is tweet about it and students will get a text.  Our grade book automatically emails parents when their kids have missing work.  Why not email the students too or send the emails as texts to their phones?  Poll Everywhere is a site that lets you create polls and you vote using text messages.  These are just a few of the examples.  Here are a couple of great videos that illustrate some positives and negatives about the use of cell phones in schools:

Some of the big questions are:

When are they okay to use?

What do you do for the students who don't have a cell phone?

What happens if they cause too much of a distraction?

Are there any possible legal issues related to cell phone use?

YouTube (2009).  Cell Phones in the Classroom : Learning Tools for the 21st Century.  Available from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXt_de2-HBE

YouTube (2009).  Students Use Smartphones in the Classroom.  Available from: http://youtu.be/AxDHataguRE

Flipping the Classroom:The Khan Academy - Blog Post #6

According to Wikipedia,

The Khan Academy is a not-for-profit educational organization, created in 2006 by Bangladeshi American educator Salman Khan, a graduate of MIT. With the stated mission of "providing a high quality education to anyone, anywhere", the website supplies a free online collection of more than 2,600 micro lectures via video tutorials stored on YouTube teaching mathematics, history, finance, physics, chemistry, biology, astronomy, economics and computer science.  (Wikipedia 2011)

The Khan Academy got its start when Salman Khan began making tutoring videos for his relatives.  He left the videos public and others began watching them.  They became so popular that he quit his job to make videos full time and start the Khan Academy.  He says that the reason for their success is that in a traditional classroom, you hear it once, and then move on.  But with YouTube videos, you can watch them anytime, anywhere, and as many times as you need.  If you have forgotten something from a previous lesson, no problem, just go rewatch the video.

Here's a video from TED 2011 of Khan giving a talk about the academy and his vision for education.

The process is pretty simple.  Students watch a video on a subject they are going to learn.  Then they take a test over the material.  They are not allowed to move to the next lesson until they have obtained mastery.  That's getting ten questions correct.  If they get a question wrong the software models the process to them.  Teachers can chart their success and intercede where necessary or send a student to help their peer.  Khan's theory that he states in the video is that if you move on before you have attained mastery then you are left with gaps in your knowledge.  These gaps will haunt you later on in your education.

He mentioned "flipping the classroom" several times in the video.  Flipping the classroom is the idea that the students teach themselves and the teacher is more of a guide.  This method was mentioned in the book The Global Achievement Gap by Tony Wagner.  In his book, Wagner examines why students in the US seem so far behind the students in other countries.  His theory was that the traditional lecture based classrooms aren't preparing students for the 21st century world.  He maintained that one of the most important skills teachers need to impart to their students is critical thinking.  This can easily be achieved by flipping the classroom.  This model forces students to think critically and places the burden of learning on them.  He examined schools such as High Tech High where they practice this method and found that the students are learning and are actually excited to go to school. 

The great thing about the Khan Academy is that they've made their videos available to everyone for free.  So any teacher, anywhere, is free to use them in his or her classroom.  I feel this completely embraces the idea of Web 2.0 and could be a great boon to classroom teachers and especially home schooled students. 

Khan Academy. In Wikipedia. Retrieved November 4, 2011, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khan_Academy

Wagner, T. (2010). The Global Achievement Gap: Why Even Our Best Schools Don't Teach the New Survival Skills Our Children Need--and What We Can Do. Basic Books. Kindle Edition

YouTube (2011).  Finding Salman Khan talk at TED 2011.  Available from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gM95HHI4gLk