To think personal smartphones have no place in the classroom?

[Lookingforastronauts]

After trying to find DS new schools mobile phone policy, and failing after 20 mins searching online. Am I being unreasonable to think that mobile phones should be off and out of sight, or collected in a box at the start of a lesson (I suppose infection control prevents this atm)

DS complained about being bored in class because everyone had been asked to login to Google Classroom on their smart phone. He said he was bored and embarrassed because he didn't have one and had nothing to do.

Surely if this is part of lesson delivery the school should provide them?

They're sticklers for uniform, surely these rules should apply to phones as well?

It feels discriminatory to me.

At our primary school, phones are collected at the start of the day and given out at hometime. As it should be. Pupils should be using books and pen/paper. They do have access to tech when required and a laptop at home with the Teams program they used on lockdown.

My DDs new secondary school have a strict phone policy. Off/silent and out of sight. If the phone is seen, its confiscated for two weeks. Agsin, I support this. The school has adequate tech access when needed and again, we have a laptop at home.

Phones have no place in classrooms YANBU. Discrimination, cyber-bullying etc are all real things and should be kept out of schools. I realise our schools are strict but fortunately have tech access. I do feel sorry for those that don't but thats up to the school to sort.

@Lookingforastronauts

When you're at work you get a work phone.

You don't use your personal number for work?

Not sure this is always true and definitely not if you are a teacher. I have to make all my calls to parents from my personal phone with my number hidden. We have one phone between 12 of us and we all need to ring after school at the same time.

Our school has been using smartphones in classrooms for the last 6 years my kids have attended. They are only allowed to use their phones when the teacher gives them permission to take them out - otherwise they are supposed to be turned off in school bags. I think if the school believe smartphones are beneficial then they should have tablets for those kids who don’t have smartphones but they don’t!

@Lookingforastronauts not every work place issues mobiles. My nhs trust, and my husbands, and my mother's (3 different t trusts) don't issue mobiles. We're all senior management and have to use our personal phones.

Buying and replacing and maintaining laptops or phones for all kids in schools whe. The vast majority will have them anyway is too costly unfortunately

@Lookingforastronauts

When you're at work you get a work phone.

You don't use your personal number for work?

Hang on, do you actually think that all jobs come with a phone?!

[quote tootiredtothinkofanewname]@Pangur2

You should not be using personal phones though. At all. Most schools issue staff with ipads/tablets that back up onto the school system so there is proof if ever an accusation was made. Using personal phones leaves you in a very precarious position. [/quote]
Can you clarify most? I have not stepped foot in a school where this is true. A friends DS used to go to a school where this was true.

I think making mobile phones “naughty” and hidden actually makes cyber bullying worse, in secondary school anyway. Teaching them how to use them as a useful tool works much better. We’ve had way fewer issues since implementing this policy. The kids behave much more maturely with their phones now.

@Lookingforastronauts

When you're at work you get a work phone.

You don't use your personal number for work?

The only thing I use my work phone for is calling customers, I do everything else on my personal phone because I prefer it. If I’m doing a course I’ll be googling and taking photos of the board/notes the whole way through, and so will everyone else. The course tutors expect it.

I think you need to move away from thinking of phones as a bad thing. Phones are incredible pocket computers which give today’s pupils a massive advantage. They’ve got literally the whole world in their pocket.

I read an interesting article about this in an educational magazine a few years ago. It said to imagine telling teachers in the 80s/90s that one day most students would have a powerful computer in their pockets. Imagine how excited they would be at the options that opened up for teaching and research. Now imagine telling those teachers that the children would have to keep it switched off and would be in trouble if they were caught using it!

My school actually does insist on them being switched off which is frustrating when the investment in ICT is pitiful. I can never access a computer room with my classes and we no longer have student laptops as they became old and outdated and we couldn't afford to replace them. I sometimes allow pupils to take a photo of their work, or something on the board etc that they haven't quite finished so they can do it at home. They sometimes photograph each other's revision cards etc to share resources and one class even organised themselves into a WhatsApp revision group for my subject and helped each other with notes etc. The potential is amazing but so, sadly is the potential for disruption. However, phones are part of life now and I think using them in lessons would actually be a way to teach their use as a tool in work etc.

Your last few posts have showed that you're completely out of touch with the realities of day to day teaching. No, of course schools can't buy phones for kids (and in Covid times you're again running into sanitisation issues). No, teachers don't get given work phones. Many don't even get enough whiteboard markers!

I agree with the person who said the school is probably keeping up the Google Classroom usage in case of shutdowns. You have to keep the kids trained up in these things, especially at the start of the school year when you reteach and revise expectations.

DD's secondary school allowed phones at the teachers discretion for specific tasks, but unless instructed that they could use them in that lesson they had to be out of sight and on silent. This was utilised more in later years. Her sixth form at a different school had a similar policy.
Inappropriate use was subject to strict sanctions. It seemed to work okay for them and they had no issues during her time there.
There were some tablets in school for the few who didn't have a smart phone to use - however Dd said that she didn't know anyone who didn't have a smart phone by that stage.

@SoVeryLost yeah I have never worked for a school that has provided me with any sort of tech. I have access to a desktop computer in my art room and the art office and that is it. Some posters live in another world. Most teaching jobs don’t provide you with your own mobile phone and tablet haha! And if they did they would probably be crap. (The mobile phones we borrow for trips are almost unusable.)

I would add that it is highly unusual for a pupil not to bring their phone to school yet I lend out 4-5 pens, rulers etc most days for students who don't have one!

I was at school in the 70s when calculators first starting becoming common place. People were saying the same then about how they had no place in the classroom. Teachers thought kids should continue using Logs and slide rules for calculations etc. They were reluctant to embrace the real/outside world even back then. Seems nothing changes.

As for porn, etc., loads of boys had girlie mags in their school bags back then, so it's only how they view them that has changed! They'd swap them between eachother.

@tootiredtothinkofanewname each dept will have multiple lessons running at once in a secondary school. Even a small dept like Art could have 3 or so lessons at once, let alone large depts like English, Science or Maths. So no, a set per department would not work.

If they do t have a phone they just share with a friend. It’s no big deal

It is a big deal if day on day some children don't have the equipment necessary too participate and have to watch another child doing the work/investigation.

If smartphones are to be used as part of lessons then they need to be covered by something similar to the uniform grant for low income families . Fat chance, I realise having watched the performance delivery of a single laptop in some areas for a political photo op.

When you're at work you get a work phone.

You don't use your personal number for work?

I don't know where you work but I can assure you I've never been given a work phone in any job I've ever had, in education or not.

The only people I know with work phones are in the private sector and only when at a certain level in their career.

I have a school laptop which I provided. It was my old one from home and it was much better quality and newer than the school ones. The it tech came in and set it up onto the school network for me.
I also have a school iPad but the teacher ones are now too old to run the new versions of our school platform.

I thought most schools are now introducing policies whereby phones are not to be seen during the school day, and if they are the students lose them. Some schools then insist on parents in attendance to collect them at the end of the day, and repeat offenders lose the privilege of being trusted to keep them on their person. (Certainly the case in my dcs schools and the ones I've worked in.)
Students may have access to laptops or ipads, but that's a different matter.

My daughter’s high school have a ban on using phones on campus at all, let alone in class (believe it’s to do with safeguarding children due to smartphones, social media, cameras on phones etc which imo is totally sensible). They do have school tablets though and every student has one. The children use the tablets for basically everything- timetable, homework diary contacting teachers and each other about homework and reporting issues.

I’m surprised that a school nowadays doesn’t have an easy to find policy on mobile phones- to cover their own backs if anything.

I clearly am out of touch of day to day to teaching and I'm shocked.

My high school days were blighted by serious sexual bullying and I'm only grateful smartphones did not exist in those days. I think children age 11 and 12 should not be having unsupervised Internet access and for this reason I will not be buying my child a smartphone. Most of my sons peers are regularly using apps inappropriate for their age. Also many kids do not have the self control at that age (nor indeed some adults) needed for addicted phone use not to get the better of them. And that's before you get the harm camera algorithms and filters have on self image. I really can't see myself being persuaded that smartphones for young teens/preteens are an overall positive.

Also, another kid smashed my child's phone at school yesterday. So that's another reason I will not be buying him an expensive device.

You can lock down kids phones pretty well and obviously you can check them. I can see everything my children do on their phones.

You don’t have to buy them a phone and give them free rein on it. Most parents moderate their children’s phone usage.

My dds high school use phones in a lot of their classes, and have been asked to bring in their own tech, so could bring a tablet or laptop if preferred.
pretty obvious that school cant provide everyone with their own phone or tablet, and with coronavirus too much hassle to share school ones.
This is the way it is now, majority of kids have a smart phone, you can get them pretty cheap, doesnt need to be an expensive one , but your ds will most likely be the only one in his class without one.
Also most work places do not provide their staff with a mobile phone 🙄
dds primary school,phones used to be handed into the office at start of day, collected at end of day, now they've to only be brought if absolutely necessary and switched off and left in bags for whole of school day.

I get my learners to use their phones in session. I use my personal phone for work, I’ve never been issued with a work phone. The laptops and PCs in my department are 8 years out of date. We have 6 (4 year old) tablets to share between 156 learners. So booking isn’t always an option. 2 of the tablets have charging issues so can only be used for 15 minutes at a time. However, I’m supposed to use OneFile and a range of apps to improve the engagement in my lessons. It actually forms a part of our observation criteria. I’m just not able to access the equipment to do it, so I ask the students to use their own or I’ll be penalised.

The apps I use like Aurasma, Socrates, Kahoot and Padlet are great and definitely enhance learning.

To those saying school need to provide, well in an ideal world yes of course. But in truth I can’t even buy a class set of set texts. I buy my own pens and sometimes my own lined and copier paper. My partner teaches science and his classroom has windows that leak so badly when it rains he’s actually made a feature out of it. So yeah, it would be brilliant to buy mobiles, iPads, working laptops and really use all the awesome tech that is out there for education, but schools are skint on the whole.