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.

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

The trick you're missing is that teachers should not have been put to this expense in the first place.

My point, which you chose got ignore was that parents needed to be aware of this when they pissed and moaned (or not) about online teaching.

Can you expand on the pros of this beyond there being a "ton of stuff" Because I can only see the draw backs

MFL teacher - online dictionaries vs the perils of google translate; kaboot ; all my vocab is on quizlet which is possibly the most useful tool for getting people to get heads down and focus so there’s time for a game at the end; any number of mfl sites and apps used for listening and reading; sites such as Seneca where I can set work and see how long individual students have taken to complete a task (very telling) and what a class collectively and individually gets right/wrong - damned useful for targeted revision and/or reinforcement; text book is online along with additional interactive activities students can do and I can see success rates; any number of sites with interactive games; Teams allows you to set up quizzes which are self-marking; online magnets for sentence construction; online whiteboard that can be used instead of worrying about cleaning whiteboards and pens between lessons; collaborative work possible across shared files; ease of using different colours to show/highlight different types of errors; QR codes to send children to useful places online to help when working independently, Pinterest as a means by which of collating background reading and resources for cultural topic at A Level and thus encouraging independent learning....all the sorts.

I may use tools in class or for homework as a supplement to teaching and other learning activities but frankly, the idea that we should ignore all these tools which make our lives easier as teachers and which support and reinforce learning in the modern world in which we live is doing us all a dis-service. The internet is full of wonderful stuff!

When I was teaching at college, every student had phones, so I'd plan lots of interactive content. That way they were using them in a meaningful way. Quiz apps with results on the smart board, lots of Classroom content, research etc.

When I started teaching I'd get so annoyed with the students using them but rather than confiscate, get them to use them. They're going to be doing this anyway so make it count. Even if it's just to take photos of the whiteboard when they've been doing work in groups.

Don't think I ever had a student without a phone.

Okay, so it was about 8 years ago since I left school - however, this would never of happened. Teachers would’ve been furious.
I think this is a really sad state of affairs, they should be using school devices, not personal ones. We used to have laptop and iPad trolleys teachers booked or booked the class in the library+ empty computer rooms. This is embarrassing for children who don’t have them, and inappropriate. I know several cool teenagers would find it funny to look at inappropriate things in class. Or get distracted with social media etc. Children should not be expected to have personal devices in order to participate in class.

@Enoughnowstop I don’t know how I ever taught Art or Photography without Pinterest. It’s the best thing ever for GCSE and A Level!

In my DDs' school, they must be off, out of sight, and they can only use them in reception if they need to call home. If seen elsewhere, they can get into trouble.

In my DS's, (KS4 classes at a college), they use them in class. This surprised me and I had to alter his phone so he's have more access. He says they mainly used them for Kahoot quizzes and similar online resources.

Any tool can have a place and different spaces will look at the benefits and risks of them differently. I can see why a school would want them not used at all (risks of cyberbullying, damage to expensive equipment) and why others might want to make as much use of them as possible (there are a lot of useful apps and tools) and everything in between.

My kids use their phones at school. As other posters have mentioned. Taking photos in practical subjects and sometimes they're told to take photos of the board in lessons. I have no problem with this, I use mine at home, at work it's the way the world is.

However if the dc were caught using a phone in a lesson or at lunch at school without permission it would be confiscated by teachers. I would support this.

I think that people need to accept the way schools operate, if you don't like it and don't want to fit into their rules then home school then and you can do everything your own way.

I use to hate it at school when we did a lesson based on a tv programme, we didn’t have a tv so I just used to lie. I would have felt even worse if it was to do with smart phones ( I suspect my parents wouldn’t have allowed us to have them nor could they have afforded it)I felt different enough as it was and special arrangements would have made me even more of a target for bullies.

The trick you're missing hmm is that teachers should not have been put to this expense in the first place

Nor should anyone working from home due to lockdown. Keep your hair ono.

My point, which you chose got ignore was that parents needed to be aware of this when they pissed and moaned (or not) about online teaching

I've ignored nothing. I'm telling you how to claw some of that cost back. Feel free to ignore it, don't claim the rebate and just carry on whinging.

Last year mobiles and smart watches were banned in DD’s classes but I suspect the policy will change come September. However, she did use her phone when she returned for a few weeks in July but they had to log on using the schools WiFi and SM and a lot of other sites were blocked.

DD’s accesses her timetable, homework, results via school’s digital portal, I see similar info, receive school letters, see if DD has been late or not handed in homework via the parents portal. If it’s done right (robust policies and technical solutions) smartphones are an invaluable resource and schools should capitalise on their prevalence. Schools simply don’t have the money to invest or upgrade computing equipment.

If phone’s have become a requirement then yes, pupils who don’t have the means should be provided with them but in these times it will be safer for those who have them, to use their own.

My ds has to take his smartphone and his own headphones into school (Scotland) he's just started 1st year

Like with most things it really comes down to the T&c’s of each school. I know that I am stricter with DD’s phone than other parents but we regularly discuss life online, from sexually tinged content, strong passwords, fake news, phishing, data privacy, bullying etc.

Pupils should be using books and pen/paper.

Why? I only use pen and paper once in a blue moon. Why force children to spend a decade using pen and paper when it's far more helpful for them to type?

Pupils should be using books and pen/paper.

Ridiculous, slate and chalk and an abacus, rushing into this pen and paper modern technology nonsense, no good will come of it mark my words

@JustAnotherPoster00

Pupils should be using books and pen/paper.

Ridiculous, slate and chalk and an abacus, rushing into this pen and paper modern technology nonsense, no good will come of it mark my words

Bah humbug, slate and chalk are too advanced, they should be working with stone and chisel.

But seriously, yes, children need to be taught to read and write and add up "manually", but they should then move quickly on to the modern, real world.

Just what is the point in making kids spend hours writing an essay by hand when they could do it quicker on a word processor, and spend the time save doing something more useful instead?

That's what happens in the real world. We really don't have offices full of ledger clerks adding up columns of figures anymore. We don't have typing pools typing endless documents. We don't have secretaries sat next to their bosses taking shorthand dictation.

The World moves on, yet lots of people still think we should teach our kids the same way we did 50 years ago. It's nonsense.

Where I work, all of the students have iPads. We use books as well but post-Covid we're being asked to move towards using Google Classroom as much as possible. It's a great tool actually and really cuts down on photocopying and the need for things like glue sticks, highlighters etc.

@AChooooo

Okay, so it was about 8 years ago since I left school - however, this would never of happened. Teachers would’ve been furious. I think this is a really sad state of affairs, they should be using school devices, not personal ones. We used to have laptop and iPad trolleys teachers booked or booked the class in the library+ empty computer rooms. This is embarrassing for children who don’t have them, and inappropriate. I know several cool teenagers would find it funny to look at inappropriate things in class. Or get distracted with social media etc. Children should not be expected to have personal devices in order to participate in class.

You can’t book out a laptop trolley. Students can’t share laptops. 6 months ago they could. Now they can’t. For a student to use a laptop it needs to be placed on their desk 72 hours before they touch it and quarantined on their desk for 72 hours after the last time they touch it

@JustAnotherPoster00

Pupils should be using books and pen/paper.

Ridiculous, slate and chalk and an abacus, rushing into this pen and paper modern technology nonsense, no good will come of it mark my words

Pupils can use books and pens and paper. But teachers can’t approach to see what they are writing and books and paper cannot be collected in. So if you want the teacher to see the work it needs to be done online or photographed on a phone and uploaded

I think there are a lot of parents who have not really understood the situation we are in with Covid. 4 Scottish schools have closed already. It took less than a week. And that is with stringent mitigation in place. Schools are going to have to tighten up the rules, not relax them. Even then there are going to be massive closures

"Ridiculous, slate and chalk and an abacus, rushing into this pen and paper modern technology nonsense, no good will come of it mark my words"

When I was working with (primary) children who were struggling with maths, and for whom the normal approach wasn't working, I brought in my Ikea abacus. Able to see the beads fill a line, so having to move one across from the next line down, helped several to 'get' how adding on after nine involves adding one more to the 10s.

We learn differently and the old ways worked for some, don't knock them.

Nobody is knocking "old ways." We're knocking the ridiculous idea that children should be forced to work in pen and paper for over a decade.

In y6, phones were collected at the start of the day and the teacher returned them at home time.

My youngest in about yo start y10 and smartphones are sometimes used in the classroom eg teacher asks kids to photograph the homework instructions from the board to save on photocopying or they are used for research purposes. There's the odd form time when teachers allow kids to listen to music on their phones.

Considering how tight budgets are I think it's better that kids have their phone rather than the school having to replace iPads every 5-7 years when Apple stops supporting them. The pcs at school are old and slow enough without the tech budget having to stretch to personal devices too.

Digital literacy not big on your priorities OP?

What we found during lockdown when we used G-Suite with the kids was how clueless,despite the insta culture etc that we associate with teenagers, a lot of them were about how a phone is, these days, basically a PC with internet, but one you can put in your pocket.

Fortunately our HT is very switched on (pardon the pun) digitally so not only were our lessons and admin up and running on G Suite within days of lockdown being announced but it's all been left there so should distance learning arise again, were good to go.

The school's policy is no phones on in class unless being used for didactic purposes. I teach languages and last year various classes designed apps, virtual tourist tours, made interactive maps, set up a series of podcasts in their target language which were exchanged with a school in the target language country etc etc. Flipped classroom techniques, for years the norm in language teaching are now far more common thanks to digital content available through the coursebooks.

Not my school, but another school in the area has a "digital only" class which doesn't use any textbooks but only the digital version.

Books, pens and paper have their place, of course they do, and give me a book any day of the week, but our kids can't be left behind just because we don't like it.

*we're good to go.
Urgh.