Teens and Cell Phones

Cell phones can be noisy and distracting. But they can also be an aid to learning.

Many schools frown on students using cell phones in the classrooms, but a British study suggests that they reconsider. The mobile technology could in fact be a powerful learning tool.
“We hope that, in the future, mobile phone use will be as natural as using any other technology in school,” says Elizabeth Hartnell-Young, University of Nottingham research fellow and study co-author.

Hartnell-Young and colleagues tracked 331 teens, ages 14 to 16, for nine months in five participating schools whose teachers incorporated “smartphones,” or cell phones with Internet access and other advanced functions, into lesson plans. Students used the smartphones to create short movies, set homework reminders, record their teachers’ readings of poems, time experiments via phone stopwatches, access relevant Web sites, and transfer electronic files between school and home. The study gave the smartphone-enhanced lessons high marks.

“Even pupils were often surprised at the thought that mobile phones could be used for learning,” says Hartnell-Young. “But after the hands-on experiment, almost all pupils said they enjoyed the project and felt more motivated.”

These findings do not surprise Joseph Porus, vice president of market-research firm Harris Interactive, who notes that teens have a deep comfort level with mobile phones. In September, Harris Interactive and telecommunications trade association CTIA co-released a survey of teen phone use in which 51% of the teen respondents said they consider the cell phone a vital means to getting important information.

Nearly one in five respondents (18%) said that the cell phone is a positive influence on their education. Of those who access the Internet on their phones, 24% do so for class-related purposes and 39% do so for national and world news.

Phone Web features are increasingly important, according to the Harris poll. Some teachers collect homework online and answer questions about assignments through e-mail or text-messaging.

“The mobile phone is another form of access to teachers and to help,” Porus says.
The mobile phone can go to less-than-edifying purposes also, however.

Some students at a school in British Columbia school created a “fight club” with scheduled smackdowns that they recorded and uploaded for global sharing. In a Quebec classroom, students acted chaotically so as to provoke their teacher and then recorded his angry outburst for later upload onto YouTube.

According to Emily Noble, president of the Canadian Federation of Teachers, incidents such as these prompted many Canadian school districts to ban students’ use of cell phones altogether.
“While we at the Canadian Federation of Teachers do not object to cell phones, we have serious concerns about their misuse–e.g., to cyberbully, cheat on exams, or just be disruptive in the classroom,” says Noble.

But Noble stressed that many teachers in Canada have been able to “use the technology in a positive way.” At a school in Saskatchewan, eighth and ninth graders reading Todd Strasser’s novel The Wave used cell phones to share thoughts about the book, record and summarize group discussions, share digital art projects, and receive morning homework reminders from their teacher.

“It’s like everything else; you have to be careful about it. There’s proper and improper use,” Noble says. —Rick Docksai

Sources: Joseph Porus, Harris Interactive, www.harrisinteractive.com.

Emily Noble, Canadian Teachers’ Federation, www.ctf-fce.ca.

CTIA, www.ctia.org.

University of Nottingham, www.nottingham.ac.uk.