This is the response in my mind to “Remember that technology we told you that you had to use last year? The one that we told you would be around for years so you better learn it and use it frequently in your classrooms? Well, we’ve replaced it!”

Part I: The Good

I am always impressed to see talented teachers incorporate meaningful technology into their classrooms. After all, ever single piece of technology I have used is because I saw another teacher using it and was able to imagine how I too could find success in it. Even though I am sometimes skeptical (for example, about the flipped classroom), if someone makes an excellent argument for it (like the NCCAT presenter!), I can easily get on board. I mean, by the end of the week at NCCAT I had already e-mailed my principal asking if I could do some staff development on inquiry-based learning and the flipped classroom.

I have for sure been able to use technology to improve student engagement and understanding.

Part II: The Bad

My school is very lucky to have a 1 to 1 laptop program and a strong tech infrastructure (the internet does crash from time to time, but that happens everywhere, as we found last Tuesday!). However, I also feel very lucky to have a school policy of no mobile devices in sight during instruction. My dream come true! I don’t have to stop my lesson to repeatedly tell the kids to put their cell phones away, because they know I can TAKE them away. I am also allowed to confiscate for the ubiquitous secret pocket or lap texting, which I have to say I have been quite good at tracking.

When it’s time for discussion or an activity, no student is looking down at their phone or at their laptop screen (I have a strict policy of laptops closed when not in use for this reason—their eyes naturally drift back there). Their eyes are on the person who is directly interacting with them. And in English, interaction is KEY.

I learned at NCCAT that Augmented Reality can only be properly done with mobile devices. I wasn’t too worried about it, because even though it’s really cool, I think I have found technology that has a similar point but without the all-encompassing nature of Augmented Reality. However, what I learned at NCCAT is that mobile devices are increasingly being used in the classroom. Many schools are skipping laptops and going straight to tablets. Tablets are understandable due to the lower cost and higher portability, but the use of smart phones shocked me! I purposefully did not bring my smart phone to most of the NCCAT sessions because I knew I would be distracted by texting. The one time I did bring it, guess what….I WAS DISTRACTED BY TEXTING. I am an adult with supposedly some level of self control, so why do we assume a 14 year old can exhibit enough self control to not text during our activities?

Perhaps you could say because they love the lesson so much and wanted to not miss anything so they do not do that. To which I say….if I was a 14 year old with a smart phone I don’t care how much I loved the lesson or how difficult it is; I would totally text any time I could get away with it. Because BOYS.

Another very serious concern is that nefarious activities that could be made easier by cell phone use. It cannot be denied that texting is the easiest way to communicate plans such as selling drugs during school, which I have experience from when I went to high school. I graduated high school in 2002, so cell phones were much rarer, but people had beepers. They had to implement a strict no beeper policy due to these issues becoming rampant.

You could respond with, well, kids will just do it on their laptops instead. I disagree: since the laptops are monitored by the school regularly, a kid opening a chat with such information will be seen by someone in the school. Kids at my school have gotten in trouble for exactly this, so they know it’s possible. Texting is completely private (even though it seems that, if enough proof is put forward, kids can get their cell phones confiscated and their texts/pictures looked through. I am fuzzy on these laws….does anyone know details?).

QUESTIONS FOR ALL OF YOU:

I dunno…am I being silly for thinking that phones could cause a security risk?  

I would love to hearfrom you all who use smart phones in your classroom! How does this work? Do the kids text? What do you do? Do you feel that kids can text during class and it doesn’t take away from the lesson?  

Also, are any of you like me and are confounded by the use of cell phones in the classroom? Or is this an inevitable development and I need to get on the bandwagon?

Part III: The Ugly

NOTE: This section is very specific to technology that teachers must use as either county or state-wide mandates.

I really really really really hope that Home Base will stick around. Like, seriously. Every year we are told THIS IS IT! THIS IS THE SYSTEM OUR SCHOOL IS USING! LEARN IT! DEDICATE YOURSELF TO IT! LIVE IT! THIS IS YOUR NEW ONLINE CLASSROOM! *cough cough school fusion cough cough* Then the next year, or maybe even in two years if we’re lucky, there’s a new thing. Oh, and you CAN still use the old thing because you dedicated so much time to it, but you have to use the new thing too. Then I end up managing two sites that do the same thing; one because I put so much time into it (*sob*) and the other because I am required to use it.

This makes teachers, especially veteran teachers, wary. Um, is this one for real? Should I really put a lot of time into it like I did all the other times?