The Cell Phone Debate has Been Ignited

After having just read a post from Scott McLeod's Dangerously Irrelevant Blog on The Unholy Trinity of Classroom Technology Uses I wanted to get out a couple of thoughts on the upcoming cell phone debate that is heading towards Westlawn.

Now this is a public forum, so I am not going to get into the specific reasons for this renewed debate, but I think I can safely identify some general misuses of cellphone/ipod technology that is common to this and other schools.

Then I will present some arguments for and against a BAN ON CELLPHONES!!???

I am really torn on this issue. I am a fierce advocate for the utilization of ed. tech. tools in the classroom and school, but I am seeing so many problems in the classrooms because of cellphone use, and I am not seeing many positive uses of the student owned devices. 

1. Cellphones as distraction - receiving texts and receiving updates and notifications from various sights are distracting students. I know that personally when I get pinged with a new notification or email I want to check right away. This is happening in the classrooms and it is making teachers justifiably angry. Listening to music at inappropriate times is also a manifestation of this cellphones as distraction problem.
2. Cellphones as agents of evil - I am so freakin tired of the word bullying, but cellphones are used to be mean to other people. There are all kinds of ways that these adolescents are mean to each other through their phones during the school day. Girls texting each other the mean, profane and threatening things they would never say in person, anonymous sites like ask.fm that allow people to send and receive some of the most hate-filled and vile anonymous messages that I have ever seen. Problems with cameras and sharing inappropriate pictures (take this for what you will, it is a problem in all schools and it needs to be addressed). 
3. Cellphones as underutilized (non-utilized) potential. One of the most provocative and damning arguments here is that they aren't being used anyway, so why have them in the classroom. If the cellphone is only ever used by the teacher as device for listening to music in social and a calculator in math then do students really need their cellphone in class?

The three items above captures the main problems with cellphones in schools and can be used to justify the ban on cellphones at Westlawn. Did I miss any of the big reasons to ban cellphones from our students? Let me know in comments.

Onto the other side of the debate. 

IDK who would argue which side here. Donkey Laugh or Objectivist (both  insults)

Two of the above points can be handled in one argument, and I am not trying to be contrite, but this one argument alone is enough to practically end the debate because of the logical finality of it:

Students need to be taught how to handle and navigate the distractions of their always on, always connected digital environment. Students need to be taught the positive uses of cellphone technology in order to counter the evil that they are currently being taught by society and their peers. Junior high is the time to teach and assess the learning of these skills, values and attitudes.

There, I might as well leave the debate now, that's all that really needs to be said, but of course it isn't. Given that you agree with the above argument you would have to agree that cellphones do in fact belong in the school. They even need to be brought out on purpose, so that they can be discussed and children can be taught how to use them properly. This work is too important, and doing nothing is too destructive, that it can't be left to individual classroom teachers. 

Here is what I propose needs to be done as an alternative to banning cellphones:

1. A curriculum of lessons and assessments teaching students the nature of cellphones and digital technology as agents of good and evil. One or two lessons a month delivered to homeroom classes, so that all students are learning the same lesson together. This would take some thought on how exactly to develop this, but as an example we could run grade 7 - texting, it's impacts and consequences, grade 8 - anonymous messaging, it's impacts and consequences, grade 9 - sending nude pictures, it's impacts and consequences. Some lessons can be delivered to all grades - grade 7, 8 + 9 reporting evil online behaviour: is it tattling? With a well thought out body of lessons we can teach and measure and value the right kind of behaviour, and when society looks at us, or we look at the mistakes our students still make we can at least say that we did teach the lessons and provided that opportunity for students.
2. A whole staff built school policy on the use of cellphones in class. Our current policy, that it is a classroom decision, is flawed. There is a correct time to listen to music, and it is not while you are reading!!!!! Students should know what the consequences will be for breaking policy in all classrooms. One policy that I support is that students are required to show their communication to their teachers when asked. This will be contentious, and considered by some to be an invasion of privacy, but it is necessary if we are the agents that society has deemed responsible for teaching these lessons. Once the policy is agree on, we communicate to students and we communicate to parents, and if they do not agree than the cellphone is, in fact, banned.
3. Teachers need better PD on how to use cellphones for productive work. Remind 101, polleverywhere, how to send pictures to a class blog, and blogging with your phone. Teachers need to be taught that these tools exist, and they need to be taught how to use them with their students.

This blog post helped me think seriously and concisely about the topic. What started as a conflict, now seems very clear to me. One last thought remains only partly expressed. Students will have these devices, it's inevitable. In some families they will be taught how to use them for good and not evil, but in low-income areas like ours, this will not always happen. Our students deserve to learn how to navigate these waters. So often I catch myself saying, "these poors kids, how will they not drown in this sea of change?" Yes, I am often melodramatic at work. They do not come into grade 7 ready equipped with how to survive the digital age, but they should sure as hell leave grade 9 with a few tools to help them on their way.

Descent into the Maelstrom

I am going to borrow heavily from the ideas of Marshall McLuhan here, and I invite you all to stop reading. Do you remember what he said about Edgar Alle Poe's story, Descent into the Maelstrom?

To paraphrase grossly, McLuhan looked at Poe's poem as a metaphor for surviving the chaos of a world that is rapidly changing because of technological change. Here are some excerpts, as you read them (if there is anyone left) think of the storm that this young man and his ship are about to enter as a metaphor for our current situation - rapid technological shift altering the fundamental nature of the world our students are growing up into.

As the boat approaches the Maelstrom:

"I now made one or two attempts to speak to my brother - but, in some manner which I could not understand, the din had so increased that I could not make him hear a single word, although I screamed at the top of my voice in his ear."

 On the inability of our strong and solidly built classroom and schools to weather this new storm:

"When a boat is well built, properly trimmed, and not deep laden, the waves in a strong gale, when she is going large, seem always to slip from beneath her - which appears very strange to a landsman - and this is what is called riding, in sea phrase. Well, so far we had ridden the swells very cleverly ; but presently a gigantic sea happened to take us right under the counter, and bore us with it as it rose - up - up - as if into the sky. I would not have believed that any wave could rise so high."

Can you interpret this passage?
"It may appear strange, but now, when we were in the very jaws of the gulf, I felt more composed than when we were only approaching it. Having made up my mind to hope no more, I got rid of a great deal of that terror which unmanned me at first. I suppose it was despair that strung my nerves."

As educators, we are already in the middle of the storm. We can ignore the noise and clamour of the outside world and focus our attention on helping student survive the storm:
"There was another circumstance which tended to restore my self-possession ; and this was the cessation of the wind, which could not reach us in our present situation - for, as you saw yourself, the belt of surf is considerably lower than the general bed of the ocean, and this latter now towered above us, a high, black, mountainous ridge. If you have never been at sea in a heavy gale, you can form no idea of the confusion of mind occasioned by the wind and spray together. They blind, deafen, and strangle you, and take away all power of action or reflection. But we were now, in a great measure, rid of these annoyances"

The Desire to ban cellphones:
"As I felt the sickening sweep of the descent, I had instinctively tightened my hold upon the barrel, and closed my eyes. For some seconds I dared not open them."

Here is the secret for survival, observation and reflection: We have to help students to observe and reflect. 

"Looking about me upon the wide waste of liquid ebony on which we were thus borne, I perceived that our boat was not the only object in the embrace of the whirl. Both above and below us were visible fragments of vessels, large masses of building timber and trunks of trees, with many smaller articles, such as pieces of house furniture, broken boxes, barrels and staves. I have already described the unnatural curiosity which had taken the place of my original terrors. It appeared to grow upon me as I drew nearer and nearer to my dreadful doom. I now began to watch, with a strange interest, the numerous things that floated in our company. I must have been delirious - for I even sought amusement in speculating upon the relative velocities of their several descents toward the foam below. 'This fir tree,' I found myself at one time saying, 'will certainly be the next thing that takes the awful plunge and disappears,' - and then I was disappointed to find that the wreck of a Dutch merchant ship overtook it and went down before. At length, after making several guesses of this nature, and being deceived in all - this fact - the fact of my invariable miscalculation - set me upon a train of reflection that made my limbs again tremble, and my heart beat heavily once more.

"It was not a new terror that thus affected me, but the dawn of a more exciting hope. This hope arose partly from memory, and partly from present observation."

After observation and reflection:
"I no longer hesitated what to do. I resolved to lash myself securely to the water cask upon which I now held, to cut it loose from the counter, and to throw myself with it into the water. I attracted my brother's attention by signs, pointed to the floating barrels that came near us, and did everything in my power to make him understand what I was about to do. I thought at length that he comprehended my design - but, whether this was the case or not, he shook his head despairingly, and refused to move from his station by the ring-bolt. It was impossible to reach him;"

This storm will not last forever:
"The barrel to which I was attached sunk very little farther than half the distance between the bottom of the gulf and the spot at which I leaped overboard, before a great change took place in the character of the whirlpool. The slope of the sides of the vast funnel became momently less and less steep. The gyrations of the whirl grew, gradually, less and less violent. By degrees, the froth and the rainbow disappeared, and the bottom of the gulf seemed slowly to uprise. The sky was clear, the winds had gone down, and the full moon was setting radiantly in the west, when I found myself on the surface of the ocean, in full view of the shores of Lofoden, and above the spot where the pool of the Moskoe-ström had been"




Another "last thought" on my interpretation of McLuhan. He is often understood as a supporter and advocate of technological change. I disagree with this interpretation. McLuhan was terrified of what electricity and television were doing to humanity. If he were to see the power of the devices that our students carry around today he would think us mad and likely doomed. What McLuhan advocated was awareness and planning. Look at the changes you have wrought! Imagine the future changes that are coming! You must prepare yourself and your society in order to survive with values and sanity intact.

We need to heed his prescient advice and prepare ourselves and our students to survive this and the future of  technological change.

Please comment below.