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How exactly to Cope with Cell Phones in School

Here’s The Good, The Bad and The Solution for mobile phone usage in the classroom.

There’s no bigger classroom distraction when compared to a student employing a phone. Teachers struggle with cellular phones in school on a daily basis. On one hand, teachers want students to learn to manage their phones on the own. On another hand, the distraction phones create can be detrimental to both students and teachers. Power struggles ensue, wasting valuable class time. Due to this, teachers need practical and enforceable strategies for coping with phones within their classrooms.

The Good

Most schools allow students to have cell phones for safety, which seems unlikely to improve provided that school shootings remain a typical occurrence. But phones aren’t just tools for emergencies; they can also be valuable tools in the classroom. If there’s a word or concept students doesn’t understand, the student will get information instantly. Phones have calculators in addition to spelling and grammar checks. Above all, phones allow students to communicate with one another and with experts in fields of interest. The question remains, however, whether the usage of cell phones in school outweighs the distraction they cause.

Further Reading: Quiz: Are You a Tech-Savvy Teacher?

The Bad

Most teachers can tell you that cell phones adversely affect learning in the classroom, and research backs that up. Common Sense Media, a nonprofit organization that promotes safe technology and media for children, reported that “50 percent of teens ‘feel addicted’ to mobile devices.” The report also stated that 78 percent of teens check their devices at least hourly, and 72 percent of teens feel the need to immediately respond to texts, messages on social networks, and other notifications. The paper also found that multitasking—for instance, toggling between multiple screens or between screens and people—impairs a child’s ability to learn and work effectively.

Students are generally highly prone to the forms of distractions smartphones provide. My colleague caught students watching Grey’s Anatomy during her class. Other students tweet, text, and pay attention to music when they must be on task. In accordance with Jeffrey Kuznekoff, who conducted a study on phone use by college students, “You’re putting yourself at a disadvantage when you’re actively engaged together with your mobile device in class and not engaged in what’s going on.” Saraswathi Bellur, an investigator at the University of Connecticut, unearthed that multitasking in class “probably will harm academic performance.”

The Solution

A number of my fellow teachers and administrators say that students have to learn to effectively manage their phones in the classroom on the own. Personally, I believe my students need a little assistance with this. This year, I implemented a telephone storage system within my classroom. Students were required to position their devices in a wallet making use of their name onto it if they entered the classroom. I made this procedure an official classroom policy, and I explained my rationale to students in a frank discussion.

Parents and students both had to sign off on the policy. Storing phones was a game-changer in my own classroom. Students didn’t balk at it, and they actually seemed to understand the time away from their phones. They seen that they are often without their phones for an entire class period without the world ending.

Researcher Jesper Aagaard suggests that in order to pay more attention in class—or even outside school—students should make an effort to obstruct their habits by turning phones off or putting them in airplane mode to help keep from constantly checking them. In the event that you share this advice with students, it might make them to see the issue and work to alter it. When I explained the study on the negative impact of cellular phones in schools to my students, they more readily consented to store them during class.

Further reading: The Pros and Cons of Digital Tools for the Classroom

The utilization of mobile phones in schools is not planning to go away, so learning how to effectively manage and handle them is a valuable skill for students to learn. I became more in tune with my own mobile phone addiction through this process. Now, along side my students, I’m working to savor my entire life without my phone a little more.

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