Scissors and Cell Phones
We certainly live in technologically disruptive times. The release of the iPhone at the end of June represented an important step in continuing technological convergence which is bringing powerful, mobile computing and communication power literally into the hands of people around the planet. Before playing with the iPhone myself in a local AT&T wireless store, I hadn't realized it has a specific application button for watching YouTube videos streaming directly from the Internet. I don't know of a single public school district here in Oklahoma that does NOT block YouTube (All public districts block it.) It's not likely many students will show up for the first day of school in August 2007 holding an iPhone, but the capability which the iPhone represents to access streaming video from the Internet over cellular network connections as well as WiFi connections is VERY challenging to traditional conceptions of teaching and learning.
Traditional teacher-to-student passive learning models have no place for new technologies like laptops or cell phones. As long as the identity of the teacher is defined as the source/fount of knowledge, and the students remain receptacles or sponges to "receive" that knowledge directly from the teacher, digital sources of expert knowledge (or just raw information) will be seen as a distraction, an annoyance, and even a threat by educators, parents, and educational leaders. The sea of information in which we find ourselves today should highlight the importance of educators serving as FACILITATORS of learning, not the singlemost important source of ideas and content knowledge in the classroom. Doing otherwise is analogous to an ostrich which chooses to put its head in the sand at the first sign of danger.
Can cell phones and laptops be used in inappropriate and hurtful ways? Certainly. So can pencils, as Doug Johnson has pointed out in his excellent article from 2005 "A Proposal for Banning Pencils." (PDF) As Doug argued so eloquently, "Ex abusu non arguitur in usum. (The abuse of a thing is no argument against its use.)" When it comes to cell phones and laptops in our classrooms, we need to keep this in mind and help others do the same.
Are students in your classroom permitted to use scissors? Don't you realize the bad choices students could make with scissors to hurt themselves or hurt others? Of course you do. That is why as teachers, we enforce (and encourage the other learners in the classroom to help enforce) a culture which is intolerant of unsafe or hurtful uses of scissors. No one (regardless of age) is permitted to run with scissors. Use of scissors to threaten or injure others is not tolerated. We keep scissors available in our classrooms to use at need, but we recognize the menu of uses for that tool must be limited by the attitudes, language, and actions of multiple stakeholders in the educational learning culture, not merely the teacher of record in the classroom.
I sense many school leaders and even educational technology conference coordinators are not "ready" to hear the message about how cell phones can be used to engage students in the learning process, facilitate the creation of visual knowledge products utilized to demonstrate mastery of required knowledge and skills, and appropriately provide a virtual "window" into the learning taking place inside the classroom for parents and other learners located elsewhere. Most people are much more comfortable banning cell phones and iPods, blocking all websites which permit social networking, and striving to keep other digital devices outside the classroom instead of figuring out how these devices can be used in authentically engaging ways to improve opportunities for learning.
There are good reasons for this common reactionary approach to disruptive technologies like cell phones and laptops, but those reasons should not be used as a justification for adopting a completely "statist" approach to technology. (In the parlance of Virginia Postrel, a "statist" is someone who opposes all changes to the status quo.) Cell phones have been and will continue to be used in inappropriate and hurtful ways. We've all likely read or heard about cases where someone uses a cell phone to take a locker room picture and then share it with the world. The recent NPR story "Cell Phones a New Vehicle for Violence in Iraq" points out multimedia messaging is not just being used as a weapon of terror in schools. We are living in a dynamic era of technological development, but the ways people choose to use the technological tools and resources at their disposal defines whether or not that development can be accurately termed "progress" or anarchic mayhem.
In the last month, two state-level educational conference proposal review committees have turned down my requests to present a workshop titled "Cell Phones for Learning." Of course every conference has a justifiable right to choose presentations their committees determine would be of highest interest to attending educators, and I am NOT whining here about not having a proposal accepted. I am, however, wondering out loud if the broader education community (as well as the narrower educational technology conference community) is "ready" for the message that we should use available technologies (including cell phones) to improve teaching and learning?
Karen Montgomery recently shared a workshop in Missouri titled "Using Mobile Phones to Learn" which was VERY well received by teacher participants. I think the time for MORE presentations, workshops, and conversations about these topics has arrived.
The Internet's world-wide web is not going away, and neither are cell phones or online social networks. Rather than build sea walls and attempt to fight the tide, we need to work together to learn how to live with changing tides and even surf the waves. We shouldn't opt to "cave in" to media culture and attempt to transform our classrooms into non-stop edutainment, but neither should we adopt a purely reactionary/statist approach which rejects all proposals for using new digital technologies for learning.
Are many of the students you're teaching bringing cell phones to school? It's time we asked the kids to get them out and use them for learning, rather than just banning them for use at school where more relevant work is required like filling out worksheet study guides based on a textbook that is five years old. Technology resources like cell phones and Wikipedia should challenge us to rethink assessments and our identities as teacher-leaders in the classroom. As teachers we're needed more than ever, but the landscape of learning has changed markedly. Our behavior should change as well.
Comments
Hi Wes,
Here's a thought - what if cell phones aren't so great for learning? What if we are so busy searching for "educational" justifications to use them, that we end up finding and promoting fairly weak ones. Sure, it can be a camera, it can be a text entry device, it can be used in a number of convenient ways that are equivalent to other devices.
But in the long run, is just being similar to other things enough to defeat the cries for banning them? The different thing about cell phones is what makes them dangerous, that they are controlled by the student, not the school.
Since this is primarily a political argument, I truely don't think you are going to "win" by showing the educational capabilities of cell phones.
Isn't the stronger and more primary argument about the control issue, the civil rights of students issue? You can find all the educational uses you want and still get blindsided by policies that are completely about controlling kids.
I know you will say, "both/and", but I think this issue should be primary.
Posted by: sylvia martinez | July 13, 2007 8:56 PM
I think Sylvia makes an interesting point. More and more I have come to believe that Public Education is not really about educating our students in the altruistic sense. I believe public education is really an institution about controlling our youth and that is why we face such a huge battle in tech education.
Cellphones, web 2.0 tools, and the other myriad technology tools that take learning beyond the classroom don't fit well into our industrial style of education. A high percentage of schools have "Life Long Learning" as a major part of their mission statements and yet they believe in blocking the major tools that really allow someone to do that well.
I was actually told once that elementary teachers were not letting their elementary students write essays with computers because those students would not do well on standardized tests. Why I said? The standardized tests were hand written and those students who don't have enough handwriting skills would not do as well on the test.
We have so many factors in public education that hamper progress. Public education is so slow to change because it is about control. Public Education won't change on its own as it will take some serious political decisions or high level court cases.
Take a look at how schools have changed dramatically in the past with Brown v. Board of Education and the Scopes Monkey Trial, etc. Unfortunately you don't see major change in education without a big push. I think this will be what it takes to break down the technology barriers to a certain extent. I wish we could see change for change's sake, but I am not optimistic.
The next several years are going to be very interesting as we begin to see more and more court cases involving technology, student ethical use, student and teacher rights, and security issues.
Posted by: Scott Meech | July 13, 2007 10:12 PM
Sylvia and Scott: I think you are both correct that the underlying issues here are much bigger than a decision to ban cell phones. Certainly there are institutional and cultural factors which lead to this reactionary and statist response we see in schools to influences "the system" perceives as potentially disruptive and therefore threatening to the status quo. I agree with Scott's observation that as a system, schools are more about control than altruistic development of literacy and critical thinking skills. This aspect of schools was unmasked rather dramatically in the spring of 2006, with the immigration protests we saw taking place around the United States and the responses of students as well as school leaders. I reflected on this in my post "Schools as prisons?" in April 2006. I think one way a progressive agenda can be advanced with respect to this authoritarian, controlling school culture is through citizen journalism. Those post URLs are:
http://www.speedofcreativity.org/2006/04/23/schools-as-prisons/
and
http://www.speedofcreativity.org/2006/08/25/thoughts-on-citizen-journalism/
When I advocate for the use of cell phones or laptop computers by individual learners in classrooms, I am not so much advocating just for "digital learning" but rather for individual empowerment. As I continue to read Papert's "The Children's Machine" I resonate with his contention that since the early days of computing in the 1980s, schools have assimilated computers into the "regular curriculum" by moving them into a separate room and making computers "a class" rather than a tool of self-directed education. I agree we should be aware of and discuss this bigger picture, but we also need to find tangible things we can do to promote constructive change in classrooms. Empowering individuals to direct their own learning and share their voice is one way to do this. I don't regard using a cell phone for research via SMS as the "end game" for using mobile, wireless technologies in schools, but I do see that (and other applications) as an entrypoint to first allowing personal technology devices into the classroom. Make no mistake, my agenda certainly focuses on broad-based educational change. However, we have to take small steps in many cases to move forward. While it might be good to see "a great leap forward," I'm reminded of other movements by that name which represented a big move backward.
You are both right: The issues here with school culture go far deeper. Encouraging administrators and teachers to let students use their cell phones for learning in the classroom, however, can represent a move forward in the school change movement.
I'm curious what you would each consider a better use of energy and time when it comes to trying to open the closed doors of many schools to outside technologies which could "distract" from the predominant culture of school control, other than promoting the use of cell phones for learning?
Posted by: Wesley Fryer | July 14, 2007 5:05 PM