Teachers Union To Ban Cell Phones

[socialist]

Students need cell phones in the classroom to facillitate learning. I will be using my cell phone as a tool. We need to teach students how to use cell phones, facebook, twitter, instagram etc. as tools and how to use them properly. I know some teachers who are teaching learners 5 and 6 years old how to tweet. Awesome things are happening in education.

http://www.cbc.ca/hamilton/news/story/2013/08/17/toronto-cell-phone-ban.html

[Guest]

Don't forget their times tables...

[FutureCanadian]

A device without the communication and games aspects would be a huge win in the classroom. Hell, I know I mostly used mine for games or texting. Not a lot of attention being paid there. Haha.

[Wilber]

Students need to pay attention, not play with their phones, they already spend the rest of the day doing that. Five hours a day, five days a week without their phone won't kill them. Teachers are signing up 5 and 6 year olds up for Twitter accounts?

[socialist]

Students need to pay attention, not play with their phones, they already spend the rest of the day doing that. Five hours a day, five days a week without their phone won't kill them. Teachers are signing up 5 and 6 year olds up for Twitter accounts?

Yes. look at what this innovative teacher in Windsor is doing. Look at the learners in the picture...look how engaged they are.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/windsor/story/2013/06/19/wdr-teacher-tweeting-classroom-award.html

Also, educators are bein recognized for their great twitter skills.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/story/2013/07/17/mb-blue-jay-bridge-teacher-twitter-award-winnipeg.html

[Mighty AC]

Phones, iPods, tablets, netbooks and laptops are all incredibly useful tools in the classroom. Student devices should be embraced and utilized not feared. If teachers see devices as unwanted distractions, then it is probably time to reflect on their own lesson structure and teaching practices.

[Keepitsimple]

Yes. look at what this innovative teacher in Windsor is doing. Look at the learners in the picture...look how engaged they are.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/windsor/story/2013/06/19/wdr-teacher-tweeting-classroom-award.html

Also, educators are bein recognized for their great twitter skills.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/story/2013/07/17/mb-blue-jay-bridge-teacher-twitter-award-winnipeg.html

Surprising even to me - but I agree - and that teacher seems to know how to manage classroom technology. My problem with cellphones and Ipads, etc. in the classroom has always been that they should not be a replacement for basic math and memory skills. Math is not just numbers - it trains the brain and orients one's thinking - so many little things in life and business involve estimation and measurement. There's even a relationship betweem math and music - measuring/estimating the "distance" between two notes. As for "memory" subjects like History and Literature - not only do you develop an appreciation, but it's vital to "learn" to memorize - to store information...not just to "look it up". In short, if the use of technology is not implemented properly, we risk having a generation of kids who can't "think for themselves".

Edited August 19, 2013 by Keepitsimple

[cybercoma]

I really shouldn't respond to socialist's threads because we all know this is a gimmick account, but there's a recent Canadian study that shows kids using laptops in a classroom is a detriment to not only their grades (when they're distracted with other things on the computer, ie, Facebook), but also a detriment to their surrounding peers' grades. Here's the abstract and citation for the study, if anyone's interested in tracking it down.

Abstract

Laptops are commonplace in university classrooms. In light of cognitive psychology theory on costs associated with multitasking, we examined the effects of in-class laptop use on student learning in a simulated classroom. We found that participants who multitasked on a laptop during a lecture scored lower on a test compared to those who did not multitask, and participants who were in direct view of a multitasking peer scored lower on a test compared to those who were not. The results demonstrate that multitasking on a laptop poses a significant distraction to both users and fellow students and can be detrimental to comprehension of lecture content.

Faria Sana, Tina Weston, Nicholas J. Cepeda, Laptop multitasking hinders classroom learning for both users and nearby peerfs, Computers & Education, Volume 62, March 2013, Pages 24-31, ISSN 0360-1315, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2012.10.003.
(http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360131512002254)

[GostHacked]

Students need cell phones in the classroom to facillitate learning. I will be using my cell phone as a tool. We need to teach students how to use cell phones, facebook, twitter, instagram etc. as tools and how to use them properly. I know some teachers who are teaching learners 5 and 6 years old how to tweet. Awesome things are happening in education.

Holy crap, can I sign a petition barring you from ever teaching?

[socialist]

I really shouldn't respond to socialist's threads because we all know this is a gimmick account, but there's a recent Canadian study that shows kids using laptops in a classroom is a detriment to not only their grades (when they're distracted with other things on the computer, ie, Facebook), but also a detriment to their surrounding peers' grades. Here's the abstract and citation for the study, if anyone's interested in tracking it down.

Faria Sana, Tina Weston, Nicholas J. Cepeda, Laptop multitasking hinders classroom learning for both users and nearby peerfs, Computers & Education, Volume 62, March 2013, Pages 24-31, ISSN 0360-1315, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2012.10.003.

(http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360131512002254)

I see cybercoma lives in the Dark Ages when it comes to education al advancement. Technology is the future. memorizin facts are useless. Why do students need to memorize anything when they can Goole it in 5 seconds. Think about that. That opens the brain to meaningful learnin, and more importantly, understanding.

It amazes me the people who haven't been in a classroom in years are somehow experts on education.

[GostHacked]

I see cybercoma lives in the Dark Ages when it comes to education al advancement. Technology is the future. memorizin facts are useless. Why do students need to memorize anything when they can Goole it in 5 seconds. Think about that. That opens the brain to meaningful learnin, and more importantly, understanding.

It amazes me the people who haven't been in a classroom in years are somehow experts on education.

Why even go to school then if they can google anything in 5 seconds? Makes your future career an instant non-starter. If the net goes down in some way, then you have a whole slew of people who are instantly stupid because their prosthetic brain is offline.

[MiddleClassCentrist]

Phones, iPods, tablets, netbooks and laptops are all incredibly useful tools in the classroom. Student devices should be embraced and utilized not feared. If teachers see devices as unwanted distractions, then it is probably time to reflect on their own lesson structure and teaching practices.

Talk to any high school teacher. The reality is that they are mostly used for texting, tweeting and bullying students and teachers by taking videos and posting them online.

People envision all of the learning possibilities and yes, there are some. But nothing that can't be accomplished with any other practical tool. Audio/Video - Microphone/Video Camera, Apps? Websites that have been offered for free for years. The "Net Value" or "Value Added" of using a cellphone over just as available tech tools does not exist.

It'd be like me bringing in a Nintendo DS to class. There might be one lesson I could use it for but, the rest of the time it's just a gaming distraction.

Students are too addicted to their technology, there is an appropriate time and place. The problem is that parents aren't actually teaching their kids how to use phones responsibly and are leaving it up to the schools to do so.

[cybercoma]

I see cybercoma lives in the Dark Ages when it comes to education al advancement. Technology is the future. memorizin facts are useless. Why do students need to memorize anything when they can Goole it in 5 seconds. Think about that. That opens the brain to meaningful learnin, and more importantly, understanding.

It amazes me the people who haven't been in a classroom in years are somehow experts on education.

I don't know who you think you're talking to, but all of the things you're arguing against here are not things that I advocated nor do I advocate. Memorizing facts? Where do you even get that from what I said?

And I'm all about students learning technology in the right context. I used to think they should be able to take notes with computers in classes and I still want them to be able to. However, I need to now find a way to reconcile this new research with my pedagogy, considering the research suggests that students multitasking is detrimental to their learning as well as to their peers around them, even when those peers are not using computers themselves. My primary concern is that students get as much as they can out of classes and if there's something getting in the way of their learning, it's my job to overcome that. Not stick blindly to my beliefs. If the facts of this research does not concern you, then I'm ashamed that they allow you to teach because it seems as though you couldn't give a fig less about the students' achievement. All you seem to care about is your ideology, research be damned, because you can't or won't even address the issue. I was hoping that if you were a teacher then this is something that we could discuss and work through together. But again, that's all assuming that you're not someone else's gimmick, which we all know you are. So really, I was playing along for nothing, since I know better.

Edited August 19, 2013 by cybercoma

[Mighty AC]

Talk to any high school teacher. The reality is that they are mostly used for texting, tweeting and bullying students and teachers by taking videos and posting them online.

People envision all of the learning possibilities and yes, there are some. But nothing that can't be accomplished with any other practical tool. Audio/Video - Microphone/Video Camera, Apps? Websites that have been offered for free for years. The "Net Value" or "Value Added" of using a cellphone over just as available tech tools does not exist.

Ask the high school teachers who told you this what their typical lesson plan is like and you will find the root of the problem. Technology is a problem for high school teachers that primarily lecture. Hand held, mobile tech is a great benefit to more investigative, experiential, project based methodologies.

Too many teachers assume that if a student is quiet and awake they are listening and comprehending a lesson being delivered to the whole class. That's not the case, a large percentage simply tune out.

All whole class activities ignore a large portion of the class; usually the most and least advanced students. Now, give students the ability to use their devices to look up and learn the exact same content as part of an investigative activity and you reach a much higher percentage. The advanced kids fly through the basic content and can be given opportunities to explore to greater depths. The kids that are struggling can re-read or re-watch content at their own pace until they get it, thus learning at their own pace. The teacher's time is then spent circulating and helping individuals or small groups of students, thus tailoring the learning experience to an individual's needs. This was very hard and time consuming to do before technology.

[Mighty AC]

I really shouldn't respond to socialist's threads because we all know this is a gimmick account, but there's a recent Canadian study that shows kids using laptops in a classroom is a detriment to not only their grades (when they're distracted with other things on the computer, ie, Facebook), but also a detriment to their surrounding peers' grades. Here's the abstract and citation for the study, if anyone's interested in tracking it down.

Faria Sana, Tina Weston, Nicholas J. Cepeda, Laptop multitasking hinders classroom learning for both users and nearby peerfs, Computers & Education, Volume 62, March 2013, Pages 24-31, ISSN 0360-1315, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2012.10.003.

(http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360131512002254)

Interesting. I read part of the article you linked (will finish it this evening) and it appears the lesson format being used is traditional lecture. I agree that hand held devices can detract from the effectiveness of the lecture approach, but we already know lecture is ineffective anyway. Lecture should be kept to a minimum and the emphasis placed on creating, collaborating, investigating and solving problems.

Often lectures can be condensed down to the Cole's notes version and task instructions and then supplemented with more interesting and involving activities.

[Wilber]

Yes. look at what this innovative teacher in Windsor is doing. Look at the learners in the picture...look how engaged they are.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/windsor/story/2013/06/19/wdr-teacher-tweeting-classroom-award.html

Also, educators are bein recognized for their great twitter skills.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/story/2013/07/17/mb-blue-jay-bridge-teacher-twitter-award-winnipeg.html

What would great Twitter skills be, learning to butcher the language by condensing as much into 140 characters as possible?

[The_Squid]

I am astounded that these devices aren't already banned from classrooms. How idiotic.

[MiddleClassCentrist]

Ask the high school teachers who told you this what their typical lesson plan is like and you will find the root of the problem. Technology is a problem for high school teachers that primarily lecture. Hand held, mobile tech is a great benefit to more investigative, experiential, project based methodologies.

It is naive to believe that open lessons keep students from texting and tweeting rather than doing their work. Teachers are not always the problem.

[socialist]

New math is gaining momentum. 4 x 3 = 11 and it's fine in common core as long as the student can explain how he arrived at the answer. This is rea, new age math folks.

[cybercoma]

Interesting. I read part of the article you linked (will finish it this evening) and it appears the lesson format being used is traditional lecture. I agree that hand held devices can detract from the effectiveness of the lecture approach, but we already know lecture is ineffective anyway. Lecture should be kept to a minimum and the emphasis placed on creating, collaborating, investigating and solving problems.

Often lectures can be condensed down to the Cole's notes version and task instructions and then supplemented with more interesting and involving activities.

It depends on the course. In university, they still lecture because it's the easiest way to get across a substantial amount of information in a short period of time. There are seminar-type courses which are not lecture oriented, but collaborative discussions. In those cases, computers are even less useful, except maybe to search and scan through reading materials as you discuss. Even then, they're even more of a distraction when someone is discussing an idea and everyone else has their noses planted in their computers. It's not conducive to the format at all.

[cybercoma]

New math is gaining momentum. 4 x 3 = 11 and it's fine in common core as long as the student can explain how he arrived at the answer. This is rea, new age math folks.

I think you're misunderstanding what she said. 11 is most certainly not fine. It's the teacher's responsibility to explain to them where they went wrong. Her point is that the focus is no longer memorizing multiplication tables and giving answers by rote. The focus is now on critical thinking skills, where students are able to understand how the answers are derived and why the answer is 12. They get more credit for their ability to think critical, to explain the process, than they do for the final answer. Chances are if the students learn how to do those things, they will end up with the right answer anyway. The answer 11 is only fine insofar as a student is being graded not merely on the answer alone, but the process by which they come to it.

[GostHacked]

New math is gaining momentum. 4 x 3 = 11 and it's fine in common core as long as the student can explain how he arrived at the answer. This is rea, new age math folks.

3x4=12. I don't care how you arrived at something other than 12, it is simply wrong.

Cybercoma, tending to agree with your notion on this 'socialist' account.

[cybercoma]

I don't care how you arrived at something other than 12

This approach to teaching is wrong though. We need to be teaching kids these days critical thinking skills and how to solve problems. The emphasis should be placed on their work and reasoning, rather than putting all of the eggs into the final answer. 3 x 4 = 11 is a bad example because it's pretty difficult to "show your work" on such a simplistic question and get it wrong. But the same logic applies to other coursework and more advanced maths. The point is that the emphasis for getting that gold star is no longer placed on rote memorization of facts and figures. This does nothing to teach or encourage children to develop problem-solving skills and critical-thinking skills, which in this day and age are far more important. It seems readily obvious to us because we use the internet on a regular basis, but children need to be prepared to critically evaluate the overabundance of information that is around them and separate the "good" sources from the "bad." Just having the right answer is not enough and memorizing facts is pointless when modern technology allows us to lookup facts with a few seconds. What children need to be able to do is understand the process by which the answer is obtained and to be able to evaluate the process by which they've obtained it. They also need to be able to critically analyze how others have come to their conclusions to determine whether or not it is sound. This is vastly different than when you and I (assuming you're the same age or older) went to school and were taught to memorize capital cities, multiplication tables, and historical "facts".

There's a popular post going around social media recently that shows a 1912 8th grade test. The implication is that children then were a lot smarter because they could answer all of these obscure questions. People in comments sections all over the web were criticizing kids these days for not being able to answer these questions, "but I bet they could tell you Justin Bieber's latest song. Har! Har!" The fact of the matter is kids may not know the answer to those questions off the top of their head. But I bet you any money you could give that test to a kid and they could probably find all of the answers to those questions within minutes. And those are the skills we're teaching our kids today. We're teaching them to critically evaluate and analyze sources. We're teaching them to deal with the myriad data that they have at their disposal. Those are the skills they need. And it's within that context that teaching children about technology is important.

What's not important is teaching them to be tethered to their cellphones, so they can be at their employers' every beck and call in the future. The very idea to me is repulsive. It's bad enough that line between work/leisure has already been blurred as much as it has. We start introducing cellphones into the classroom and the next generation will never have time "off" because they'll always be responding to emails and texts about work, even when they're off the clock. But this benefits future employers. The day is coming where more and more people are going to begin working for free outside of their regular hours, since "it's just a quick email" or "it's just a quick text message." This is the changing nature of work and leisure in the 21st century.

[AngusThermopyle]

New math is gaining momentum. 4 x 3 = 11 and it's fine in common core as long as the student can explain how he arrived at the answer. This is rea, new age math folks.

All I can say is wow! Seriously. It may be because I'm just a dinosaur or something but for me 3x4 has always been 12, not 11. I was unaware that such things were now negotiable. The more I see of Socialists posts the happier I am to have been educated in stone age fashion. Of course Socialist would claim that I am basically uneducated because of the methods used to educate me. However I can do sandbox type math quickly and effortlessly in my head, I can write and communicate in legible fashion and I also have a fairly good grasp of history and geography.

From what this individual posts I've deduced that they are almost functionally illiterate, have not even the most basic grasp of Mathematics and are ignorant to the most basic facts of the world around them. All is not lost though, he can Tweet and use Facebook, whoopee!

[AngusThermopyle]

I can see and appreciate your point about analysing data Cyber. What must be kept in mind however is the fact that many jobs do not and will not allow or provide for instant access to the interwebs, both now and in the future. If you raise a generation to be dependant on electronic assistance you will be doing many of these people a disservice. It is still necessary for people to be able to problem solve for themselves without outside assistance or resources. For this to happen a thorough understanding of the basics is a must. In my life I have had many jobs where I have had to do immediate calculations and estimations on the fly, so to speak. This is unlikely to change soon given the nature of many jobs.

In the future I can see people regarding the person who can answer questions without the use of a phone or tablet or some such thing with awe. How did he do that, and so quickly? Oooooh!