Cell Phone Use in the Classroom

When the issue of cell phone use in the classroom comes up, there are often conflicted views on whether or not it should be allowed. There are many valid points that can be brought up for each argument. Today I am going to share a few brief points that I think show cell phone use could be implemented into the classroom.

First, I feel that if you establish a classroom environment well enough you're students will know what they are and are not allowed to do, and the rest is up to trusting your students to abide by those guidelines. Of course, you will may have situations in which students violate that trust, but I feel that overall they will abide by it.

Secondly, there are so may ways cell phone use could be applied to the classroom. You could involve Twitter, with students tweeting about current class topics and also by communicating easily with the teacher outside of class time. You can open up polls online where students can text their answers to certain issues. Along the same lines, you could create online quizzes in which students text their answers to. Furthermore, most cell phones also have simple calculators on them. Why should students need to go out and purchase a calculator, when they are currently paying for one monthly already? While there are arguments against cell phone use in the classroom, I feel that these are some arguments that support using a cellphone within the walls of a classroom.

Overall, I feel that cell phone use could be appropriately implemented into some classrooms. This matter was discussed further under number 3 in the Google Document "Web2.0 in the Classroom from the Students' Point of View." of students from SE Polk High School near Des Moines, IA. I encourage you to check out their thoughts on the issue as well.


Picture used with permission from Tommy Huynh on flickr.com. Attribution given to http://www.flickr.com/photos/tommyhuynh/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0