Cell Phones in Schools

For me this quote from the article "I don't need your network (or your comuter, or your tech plan, or your...) posted on the weblogg-ed blog, pretty much sums it up for me, "So I am asking. When do we stop trying to fight the inevitable and start thinking about trying to embrace it."

As a Teacher Librarian my number one complaint is that our building does not have enough computer/internet access for the number of students we have. This could easily be remedied by allowing students to use their phones as a tool in the classroom. Most of them do this anyway, when the teacher has their back turned. Don't you think if we stopped forcing them to hide their phones away and use them out in the open we would gain more control over how they are used at school?

No question there are challenges to this way of thinking, like what about the students who don't have cell phones, or all the kids will do is play games on their phones. While these ideas have merit they also have solutions. Solutions that we as educators should be working on, instead of focusing on how we can continue to keep cell phones out of the classroom. We need to embrace the fact that cell phones are here to stay, and use this to the advantage of our student's education.

So instead of fighting this notion of cell phones in the classroom we need to embrace it. If we would work half as hard on developing ways the cell phone could be used in the classroom, as we do banishing it from our rooms, we could have a pretty mighty tool at our fingertips.