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.

I think you are way out of touch OP. Many people who use their mobile for work use their own phone. This can have a separate partition set up and enhanced encryption for security reasons so no issues re data protection etc. Have you heard of BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) most companies have embraced this now.

Regarding smartphones in schools, many children need a smartphone for their timetable which isn't handed out on paper sheets anymore (aside from lessons). Additionally, it's useful to see homework set in the school app, and use it in class if appropriate. Clearly, smartphones are not going to be provided to every child as they'd only use a small subset of functionality for school. I just make sure my DCs have a strong case to protect it and to be fair to them they have not had a breakage yet.

@Kazzyhoward they may have brought in magazines but they didn’t bring in hardcore porn videos did they? We still don’t know the extent of the damage that this easy access to hardcore stuff is having on young people’s development.
Of course smart phones have huge scope in terms of learning opportunities but they also have huge potential for harm, especially when used among a vulnerable age group like teenagers. Surely we as adults know how distracting they can be and also that they can prevent healthier face to face interaction - some online interaction is great of course, but we need people who are right in front of us too. Like when you see people on their phones not bothering to talk to each other. I’m not saying phones are “all bad”, they’re not, but I’m relieved the secondary school my dd is going to has a no-phones policy. It’s an outstanding school in a relatively deprived area so not everybody would be able to bring in a decent smartphone anyway.

My daughter has dyslexia and was encouraged to use her phone as much as possible, to take photos of work, to film experiments to record the teachers instructions so she can listen to them back, her phone was what got her through school!

A smartphone is an incredible tool for assessment of teaching, in a lesson I use an app that the kids answer questions on the topic and instantly see how well the students have understood the subject matter. I can then either move on or give differentiated tasks to stretch those who do understand and those who need more help. There are so many advantages than the traditional hands up approach, it gives the pupils anonymity from each other, everyone is involved and it is instant. The other alternative is to spend 15 minutes giving out questions, doing the test and peer marking.

This is just one use, there are so many more, all of them hugely beneficial to the pupils. The children are not allowed their phones out of their bags at all during the day unless under instruction and it works nicely for us.

Welcome to MN, Lookingforastronauts

OP, I hope you were just as annoyed at realising that when your children were being taught online during the lockdown, more than likely the teacher paid out of their own pocket for the laptop/broadband.

It's not okay for teachers to expect everyone to use their own smartphone unless it has been communicated in advance that they are expected to have one. That puts kids in a very embarrassing position.

DD didn't have a smartphone until she was in year 8, although she did have an old text/calls only phone for hen she was out and about - less likely to be stolen, and wouldn't matter if it was lost/broken.

Her school (secondary) actually has a "no mobiles in school" policy; those coming from further afield hand them in on arrival. It does greatly simplify things, although I would totally agree that they can be used in beneficial ways - provided the school successfully manages a policy of "only when permitted".

I had wondered whether there would be change this year, as smartphones do provide some solutions to covid-security, such as being able to scan classwork and hand in electronically. We've been told homework will be submitted electronically.

I think you just want a free phone. You say 11/12 year olds shouldn't have smart phones, but then you say the school should buy them.

Your child probably feels embarrassed to be the only one without a phone at that age.

YANBU, phones should not be used in schools.
In my school, they're banned during the school day, and confiscated if seen, even for 6th formers (except in their rec room).
At my DC's school, they are allowed in the classroom to "support learning" but it hacks me off, that at break the pupils are just phone zombies according to DD, and don't talk aloud to one another, but text, even if they're sitting next to one another.
DC find it annoying that homework is put on the board so briefly that only those with smartphones can photograph it, those without can't scribble it down quickly enough. She has to get friends to email her the screenshot.
I think that's discriminatory.
At my school at least 30% of the children don't have a device at home (for lockdown learning), I think it's a lot less at DC's school, but there are definitely some (20% PP).

We used to allow phones - really useful for quizzes, taking photos of notes to catch up, taking photos of experiments/results/practical work, checking they have the homework app(s) working, troubleshooting the homework app(s) if they aren't working for that pupil, taking photos or making notes of logins for different systems/websites they might need at home or during IT lessons, etc.

Unfortunately we had some incidents where pupils were filming teachers and each other, so now phones have to be switched off and in bags before they get in the gate.

[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]
I’ve been teaching for 22 years - I’ve never been issued with an iPad or a tablet by schools I’ve worked in. ‘Most schools’? I don’t think so. Most schools don’t provide glue sticks anymore.

I've used mine to access work emails when the school / college doesn't let me freeze the whiteboard and I don't want my emails on view to the entire class.

I've done a lot of supply and schools vary so much, they can be used appropriately, I once had a photography class in a French classroom, students took David Bailey type portraits of each other.

There are apps students can log into with their phones where they can answer quizzes individually or as a team.

Lots of VI formers photograph the homework from the board.

If the school is doing an activity that needs the students to be logged on then they should provide an alternative which is probably ging to be a laptop or a tablet.

I'd bet that your ds has not asked the teacher

[quote Pangur2]@tootiredtothinkofanewname the kids can take photos of their own work with their own phones. I have a camera, but before the new mobile phone policy came in I’d have to go around each kid individually taking photos. This would be on top of actually helping them with their art. It’s much quicker when they can take their own photos, especially when there is 30 of them.
That’s my school’s policy and I am happy with it. Other subjects use the phones for things like Kahoot, but I don’t use that much.[/quote]
The issue with this is when one (or five) of them inevitably loses their phone/smashes it and obviously hasn't got a clue what their passwords are (if they even save them to cloud storage, rather than on the phone itself), there is absolutely no record of the work.

The only way to ensure that work/images are safe is for the staff to have a set saved on the staff shared area (so it can't be deleted or saved over, as I found kids were doing to one another on the student shared area in one place - IT were no help at all) and to save a copy for them to have access to. (They'll still tell you it isn't there repeatedly), but at least it's just a copy and paste it over to their folder each time.

Can you imagine the stink that goes up just as the moderation visit approaches to find that there's no recorded work for a significant number of your cohort? Because you assumed they would be fine? Or the roof leaked overnight/there was a fire/the cleaners mistook it for rubbish and the work is destroyed and they turn out not to have photos after all?

I would say 'Now email it to yourself and me/put it on GC', but you just know some will ignore you, some will say 'Not got any data, Miss' and so on. The only reliable way is to at least back it up with photos you've taken and saved safely.

@MitziK I take photos every once and a while too, especially if a piece takes weeks (large painting or sculpture) but they take any extra work in progress photos they want. I always take good ones of final pieces with the digital SLR.

When you’re training at work how do you do it? I use my phone all the time - courses, surveys, photos, emails. I couldn't do my job without my phone.

Most training is now online anyway, so I just use another browser tab if I want yo look things up. Last classroom training I had (end of last year), we were asked to bring laptops to look things up. We also used flipcharts for group exercises, and took photos of the resulting info, rather than take notes of it. I have also been in training where we've been asked to use particular apps.

But - this is all training for people in work, and they or their employer may be paying a couple of thousand pounds for the training, so expecting participants to have a smartphone isn't as unreasonable as expecting schoolchildren to all have them - most do, but I remember how I felt as the only child in class who didn't have a TV, and that didn't matter at school, as they wheeled one in if we ever watched anything. (Which my mother wrote to school to complain about. I can just imagine how she'd have been with expectations around children to have a smartphone in school...)

My child's school has issued every pupil with a chrome book - which they are responsible for, take home to charge, use at home and at school every day.

@Lookingforastronauts

What am I assuming neon jumper?

I'm not going to spell it out for you .

A lot of posters seem to think schools have an "all or nothing" approach I.e. smart phones are used for every activity, in every lesson all day. Where schools do use them this is not the case. I would be more likely to use them in group work so groups have access to the internet for research or data presentation for example. Other posters have said they are used for a quick review/quiz. Additional to more traditional teaching and learning activities. No teacher is suggesting that kids are looking at their phone screen all day and completing all of their work on a phone.

My oldest kids school is bringing in iPads for every student, to be brought to school every day. We have to pay a monthly or yearly contribution for it, but there is a fund for people who can't afford it.

I assume it's so everyone has access to the same equipment and that they will be used to expand upon regular class content.

I can't say that I was hugely enthusiastic about it, but the school had persuasive arguments about why it was worthwhile.

My school (private) has laptop/iPad as a mandatory piece of student equipment. Most have MacBooks.

The usual difficulty is when they've run out of charge by 2pm!

Phones are banned, as all legitimate work tasks can be done on the tablet or MacBook.

Obviously this is in a 'money no object' scenario - in a U.K. state school it would definitely be helpful to permit phones, albeit with all the usual caveats re safeguarding & students not having one - you'd ideally have half a dozen classroom iPads to lend, but even that isn't necessarily affordable.

As a teacher, I do occasionally use my phone - to send a quick email or do the register if my laptop is already being used to, say, project a video - any time I can't just freeze the whiteboard, basically.

There's also this nifty little app called ZipGrade which marks quizzes instantly using a phone camera as you walk round - I use that quite frequently.

We can’t pass anything to children. Not a single thing. So if I want them to look at something , a text book page or anything, I photograph it and upload it, they get out their phones and download it. There is no other way. We can’t use any classroom equipment at all. We can use mobile phones. Students can’t hand anything in, they can only upload it. There is no chance the school could issue student with a laptop each, and sharing is banned. So basically, it’s mobile phones all the way. If 1% of students don’t have one, we are not going to disadvantage the other 99% by not using them

@Clive222 so what happens to that 1%? No education?

more than likely the teacher paid out of their own pocket for the laptop/broadband

In that case they are missing a trick. Anyone doing this should be updating their tax return to claim a proportion as business expenses - its not going to bring in the full cost of personal kit/connection but for the period of school building closure its unarguably a business expense.

[quote tootiredtothinkofanewname]@pangur2

Its not the technology that's the issue. I've already said I agree schools need to 'get with it' technology wise. It's the using PERSONAL technology that can potentially lead to all sorts of safeguarding issues. Upskirting, porn, online bullying, false accusations, theft... just to name a few. [/quote]
Agree with this. Disproportionately affects girls and female teachers. Plus general bullying issues.

I ruled out one school because when I asked the head how they dealt with inappropriate behaviour with phones he said it 'had never happened at the school' .

This can have a separate partition set up and enhanced encryption for security reasons so no issues re data protection etc. Have you heard of BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) most companies have embraced this now.

Yes and in the case of phones this is a great wheeze by which companies offload cost onto staff who may not realise that the security software gives the employer wide ranging access to their device. I would not put the kind of security management we use onto a personal device.

We still provide phones to all staff from grad entry because they need secure devices for client work and that puts unreasonable restrictions on personal devices.

BYOD for laptops seems to be less popular than a year or two ago when I could download a client VM to use on my work Mac. Many seem to have reverted to wanting their own devices used instead as the business case didn't stack up.

Agree with this. Disproportionately affects girls and female teachers. Plus general bullying issues

I agree its the personal devices which are the issue, its all about cost saving - who cares if girls are subject to even more sexual and innapropriate behaviour if it keeps costs down?

I ruled out one school because when I asked the head how they dealt with inappropriate behaviour with phones he said it 'had never happened at the school

When mine were going to secondary smartphones were not yet mainstream for kids but I used the 'how do you manage drugs issues' as a similar assessment question. "We don't have that problem" was always a good disqualifier.