Using mobile phones responsibly and safely in schools.

Recently, I came across this article. It was produced in Austria by handywissen.at where almost everyone owns a mobile phone. I was going to post a link and then found that it had been uploaded to slideshare.

Using the mobile_phone_in_school

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It makes very interesting reading and has been written specifically for teachers giving advice and tips on how to deal with mobile devices in schools. It contains exercises which encourage students to learn how to use their mobile phones in a safe and responsible way.

It is definitely worth reading.

No excuse not to use mobiles in schools.

If you cast your mind back a couple of years, you'll remember I wrote a guest post for José Picardo's box of tricks site which even ended up as an e-book.

The post was all about how I had used, and intended to use, mobile phones in class with my students. The opening paragraph was about how the Stewart Enquiry or Independent Expert Group on Mobile Phones had advised UK schools in 2001 about the dangers of children under 16 using mobile phones.

Now new research from the Institute of Cancer and Epidemiology in Denmark, reported here by the BBC news website, has found that users of mobile phones are at no greater risk of developing brain cancer than anyone else.

So school leaders, apart from the bullying, abuse and theft issues (I'm still working on these), you really have no excuse to continue to ban phones in schools.

Teach Meet Tees11

This week I attended the first Teachmeet Tees. It was organised by Steve Bunce and Simon Finch and the venue was the ARC in Stockton. It was reasonably well attended, but it wasn't the quantity of attendees but the quality which really impressed me.

I got to meet some old friends and some new ones but the most important thing was I actually learned new things.

I think teachmeets can be great for linguists as you get to see what teachers of other subjects are doing and I love the informal atmosphere. Very often you can find a use for an idea, a piece of software, or a website that is ideal for use in languages lessons that was not intended to be used in MFL lessons at all.

The presenters were:

Martin Waller who told us about his Growing Greener Together project. This is a whole school approach to creative learning through gardening, cooking, conservation, enterprise and using digital technology.

Pete Fox. Pete showed us some excellent resources for improving numeracy across the curriculum. One of which was tutpup which allow users to play lots of maths games but also compete with other children from across the world.

Alasdair Douglas told us about an amazing year 7 project at his school which was based on the Angry Birds games. The pupils designed, created and played their own versions of the game using skills they had learned in science, maths, geography, technology, etc. He tells it a lot better than I do, perhaps because he was one of the instigators and facilitators.

Mark Clarkson showed us his "image of the week" idea. This is where he uses photos to engage students in tutor time to get the to think and speak about the world around us. The pictures come from boston.com where there are galleries of news related photos from around the world.

Simon Finch showed us the history of his dealings with the apple corporation from buying his first mac to reviewing for mac user magazine in the early days and everything since and also showed us how to make mini books and gave us a few dozen reasons on how we could use them creatively in our classrooms. Simon also took dozens of photos of the event which can be found on his flickr page.

Lynda Dixon shared her love of writing implements in her "Stationery or stationary?" presentation which (as well as looking like a plug for all things Apple-y) also included a video of José Picardo's ideas on how people currently use technology in their everyday lives.

Helena Butterfield showed us all about e-twinning with schools around the world and the adventures of Michel, the teddy bear traveller, who has visited schools in many different countries as a result of a recent e-twinning project.

Fiona Joyce showed us the amazing world of Storybird an amazing site for collaborative storytelling. Fiona has even set up a storybird wiki for teachers of languages to share storybirds they have made. If you haven't seen her wiki yet, you should visit and be inspired.

Steve Bunce also presented in collaboration with Simon and urged us to look at his Kindles and play on his Xbox kinect.

Helen Daykin, representing sponsor I am learning, provided the most amazing cupcakes, too.

My presentation "10 ways to use mobile phones in your classroom" included a phone poll to gauge how great it would be for the attendees to use mobiles in their own classrooms. I made it with the free version of smspoll. it seemed to go down OK despite my terrible cold and sounding like the offspring of Mariella Frostrup and Joe Pasquale.

Here are the results of the online mobile phone poll:

Using mobile phones in school.

Almost a year ago I changed jobs. My "new" school doesn't allow mobile phones (yet) but I am working on a presentation to argue a case for allowing them in school.

At my previous school when I used mobile phones with my students, they really enjoyed the activities and seemed to be much better motivated.

Today I read an excellent blog post by Gemma Dobson, a languages teacher in Devon, who has been using mobile phones with her Year 8 class. She appears to be doing some excellent work with the students and getting them really motivated.

Last week I mentioned the possibility of using phones in class to some of my own students and they seemed genuinely enthusiastic. That is, until one of my brighter students said, "That would be great and, if we got bored, we could text our friends."

Aaaarrghhh!

Mobile phones in the classroom........again.

By now most of my friends and colleagues know my opinions on using mobile phones in the classroom. I've just read this article Cell phones in the Classroom. Bad idea, inevitable, or both? by Brad Moon.

It was tweeted to me by Clare and Alex and they got it from Peter.

(Sounds like a disease, I know.)

In the article, written in Canada, the writer tells us that the OSSTF is against allowing students to have mobile phones in school for the following reasons (the comments in italics are my childish attempts at humour):

1) they cause a distraction to students

(as do wasps and farts. Can we please ban those, too?)

2) there is a potential for student/teacher conflicts

(just like homework, shall we ban that, too?)

3) it may cause a socio-economic divide between students

(this has always existed. we can tell who are the rich kids and who are the poor kids without mobile phone inspections!)

4) they could be used to cheat during tests

(now you're just being silly. Even the most myopic of invigilators would notice a student using a telephone in a test, surely. Plus I can't even get a signal in my classroom unless I stand on a desk with one leg and both arms in the air!)

On a more serious note, mobile phones, or as I shall now refer to them, Personal Learning Devices (PLDs) are not going to go away. As educators we should be using them to their full potential in our classrooms.

If students placed their PLDs on the desk in front of them with their other equipment and in full sight of the teacher, the opportunities for abusing them would be almost non-existent.

Allowing students to use PLDs in schools may have teething troubles at the start, but in my experience the students who use them have been very sensible.

One final point and this is a fact: More students come to my classroom with a mobile phone than a pen.

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PS I've just received a link from Isabelle which takes me to this article written by Ian Yorston, who sums up what I've been trying to say for the last two years in one sentence. I'm sure he won't mind me quoting him:

Schools don't need ICT. It's coming through our doors every day. We just need to adopt and adapt a little bit.

A matter of trust.

Mobile telephones are banned in my school.

I understand why. They can get broken, stolen, be used for bullying, disrupting lessons, etc, and if a student doesn't have the "right phone" then that can be a basis for bullying, too.

Two weeks ago, I was teaching a Year 11 (Grade 10) GCSE French class when I noticed one of the students using a mobile 'phone.

I asked her what she was doing.

She replied, "I'm using "wordreference"to look up a word I can't find in the dictionary."

She showed me the screen and, sure enough, she was.

I was pleased. A student taking responsibility for her own learning is a rarity in my school and I praised her for using her initiative.

Some of the other students were amazed that I didn't confiscate it, like some of my colleagues would have.

Now, if they ask, "Can I use my 'phone to...?" even though it is against the rules, I usually find myself saying, "Yes."

Mobile phones in the classroom? You've got to be joking!

You’re probably not aware of this but as long ago as 2001 the government issued a circular to all schools (not parents!) in England discouraging “non-essential” use of mobile phones among students under the age of 15. It was feared that children could get all kinds of cancers, brain diseases and other horrible, health problems.


If you live in Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland, you can use your mobile as much as you like. You're immune, apparently!



This came from the Stewart Inquiry which the government hoped would set guidelines on a minimum age for mobile phone users, but didn't.



It seems that schools have been banning mobiles for years and now primary schools are starting to ban them, too. According to a recent survey, the average age at which a child gets a mobile phone is 8. I didn't even possess a pair of long trousers when I was 8.



In the course of my research on this I found lots of differing views.

Fiona Philips, she of GMTV fame and PETA’s "sexiest female vegetarian 2007" (could you name another? No, nor could I!), ranted in her Daily Mirror column last summer “mobile phones in the classroom, you’ve got to be joking” whereas Doug Belshaw, a very well respected teacher (what would he know?), blogged 20 ideas to get students to use their mobiles as learning tools in 2006.

Who would you side with? Yeah, me too!

The irony is, his school had also banned the use of mobiles!


It's amazing to think that in the pocket of almost every secondary school pupil is a piece of technology which has so much educational potential, but which many schools have outlawed.

I can understand why. A phone is an expensive piece of kit and schools do not want to be responsible for any loss or damage to them. Twenty years ago, TV companies would have killed to get video equipment as good as the average 12 year old now carries around in his bag.

Also, there can be lots of mayhem caused with a camera phone and some naughty children. But couldn't those same children cause just as much mayhem with a pencil, a schoolbag, or a plastic spoon.

Last term, I wanted to get some students to film each other with their phones, and use the footage to discuss with their peers ways to improve their pronunciation in French.

Sorry, not allowed.

So, how do you get around this? You can borrow a couple of digital cameras (booking them a week in advance), sign them out, charge the batteries (and learn how to insert them correctly), be trained how to use them, and then train the students how to use them, and sign them back in again. Something which should take 10 minutes to film becomes a 2 hour nightmare, so you just forget about the whole project.

Last year, I broke the rules. I sent some GCSE speaking and listening revision files to some of my Year 11 students' phones by bluetooth. They used them to revise and they achieved excellent results.

Was it really such a bad thing?

Well, yes, it was. I'm thoroughly ashamed of myself.