andyinasia wrote:erictheking wrote:The issue of phones has cropped up quite a lot on this thread, and you obviously want them switched off for most of the class.
Why not embrace them from time to time though? They're a great resource for webquests/research projects and the use of technology is especially motivating for teenagers.
I do this a lot - get students to do research in my lessons using their smartphones. However, I make clear in which lessons this is permitted/required and in which lessons it is not.
I'm lucky in that I have both a desktop facility and a laptop with fair internet speed available in the classroom for that, plus I allow phone use as well if a class requires students to research / Google.
The desktop's also useful for me to be able to Google for images / videos in prep or to quickly field visual answers for questions that might crop up as fly-balls during class.
Unless planned for use, I ask students to either switch off their phones and leave them in pockets or leave them on a dedicated phone table at the front of the class if they're expecting incoming info'. Rules are: no making/receiving calls in class, no sending sms messages in class, no playing with phones at all in class, but they can check an incoming message if one arrives. I don't have more than very occasional problems with students deciding to mess around, and those instances are done and finished with a couple of sentences - directed choice.
On The Buses wrote:At my place a teacher was asking students to place their phones on his desk for certain periods of the lesson, but there was always one student who wouldn't play ball. It got a bit heavy, and eventually the student went to speak to management. Turned out his father wouldn't let him have a smartphone, only an iPod touch.
He was ashamed that he didn't have a phone, and this incident brought it to light. That's why he complained - he was deeply embarrassed ...
The result was it was decided that asking students to hand over their phones infringed on their human rights - so 2,000 students can now fiddle away to their hearts' content.
There is no moral to this story - just that life sucks sometimes
The power of faddish and fashion-based peer pressure is a scary and hideous thing to witness - most easily seen in children. Placed after bullying and dealing with the effects of that, seeing the 'peer-pressure for gadget' sh1t piled on a kid is perhaps the worst part of the job.