Cell Phones and MY Class

My original plan was to use this blog solely for personal pleasure outside of the classroom; therefore, I was trying to omit issues concerning my education from this specific blog. However, I have become quite passionate about the subject of technology and pedagogy, and I feel that the idea of the “flat world” could be intriguing for everyone.

I’ll let YouTube start this discussion…



As you can all probably see from this video, it’s hard to justify the usage of cell phones in a classroom. I, as an upcoming teacher who is pro-cell phones in class (I don’t think I’m crazy… there’s more to come to rationalize this), would have had a similar reaction if a student had the audacity to not only keep his/her phone’s ringer on but also talk on it during the middle of class.

I guess, before I go on, it would be necessary for me to explain the “type” of classroom that I would like to create. I envision a total learning environment. I want to teach the students, and I want to learn from the students. The first day of classes I will queue up my classroom website which will have links to the class blog, the class wiki, an iMovie of what we will be creating with iMovie, and the some of the hundreds of titles that will be available for the students to read for book club (as well as other things, obviously). I can see a cell phone, which 99.9% of students have these days, being helpful rather than hurtful. Let’s help the students by teaching them how to utilize the aspects of their lives that aren’t going to disappear (cell phones, social networking, etc.).

From the video below we can see that students are aware of when and when not to use their cell phones. A video like this could also be helpful in teaching a sensitive area such as cell phone use, MySpace, and so on.



I guess my primary point is this: instead of pushing away from things that make teaching difficult we, as educators, should embrace them. No matter what happens, students will use their cell phones, they will go on MySpace and Facebook, and they will use ALL of the sites on the internet.

Driving a car can be very dangerous especially when you’re just learning… that doesn’t mean that we don’t let students learn how to drive, right?

Let me know what you folks think about this. Cheers.