Learning, Teaching & Leading Today

In continuation of last week’s article, Part 1: 44 Smart Ways to Use Smartphones in Class, here is a new list of thirty-six additional ideas to help leverage the power of these tech gadgets in the learning environment. In this blog post, I have attempted to avoid any redundancies, and I sincerely hope my endeavors were successful. Please join me in helping educators everywhere creatively use smartphones by contributing any overlooked uses and supportive responses via this survey. The shared comments can easily be assessed by clicking this link.

It has been a hot topic among teachers for many years – should mobile technology be used in the classroom? It used to be a rule that mobile phones must be switched off to avoid distractions, however increasingly mobile technology is being embraced by schools as part of the learning process. To an extent the student is in charge of their own learning, gathering information from many different sources, not just traditional teaching methods. And there are many ways teaching professionals are now using mobile technology to inspire learners:

These days, nearly everyone has a mobile phone or smartphone device. As a society, we have become dependant on these gadgets, to the point where it can be challenging to function without having access to a world of information – from transit schedules, to news, to weather or stock market updates – literally at our fingertips. However, as technology like slideshows and multimedia presentations become common fixtures in the classrooms, there remains a reluctance to embrace “social” media in the learning space. Instead, many instructors view mobile devices as potential distractions in the classroom that can serve to disengage students from the material at hand (Froese, Carpenter et al., 2012). In this article, I seek to challenge this paradigm concerning cellphone use in the classroom setting by proposing ways in which students can use their mobile devices to enhance the learning process by engaging with course material through innovative mediums. Through a review of the literature and research into emerging technologies, I will explain how smartphones can be used as an innovative tool to promote collaboration, enhance creativity, and improve communication in the classroom.

Ken Halla knows a thing or two about using technology in the classroom.

For the past 5 years, the 22-year teaching veteran has worked to transition his ninth-grade World History and AP Government classrooms into a mobile device-friendly environment where students can incorporate the latest technology into the learning process. Along the way, Halla created three of the most used education blogs in the country—“World History Teachers Blog,” “US Government Teachers Blog,” and “US History Teachers Blog”—to help fellow humanities teachers incorporate more technology and more device-based learning into their own classrooms.

This week an online article grabbed my attention. Its title read “94 Percent of High School Students Using Cellphones in Class.” I immediately scoped out the heading and thought to myself, “Finally, teachers are beginning to embrace the powerful little gadgets.” However, it did not take me long to realize the researched article took quite a different slant.

One quotation in particular caused serious professional introspection on my behalf. The article quotes the researchers as stating, “‘The potential damage stemming from heightened cell phone use during class casts a pall on the entire educational system, on the school atmosphere, on the educational achievements of the class, on the pupil’s own learning experience and on the teacher’s burnout having to cope with discipline problems in class.’”

I understand the tougher task of using regular cell phones in class versus internet ready smartphones, however , I could not disagree more with the above quotation. Although there is no doubt the very same scenarios mentioned in the above article are occurring in various classrooms around the globe, I now encourage all students to bring their cellphones or smartphones to class. Just a few years prior, my colleagues and I were struggling mightily with how to integrate the crafty handheld tools.

A blessed trip to the ISTE 2011 conference in Philadelphia helped me devise a BYOD classroom management plan and opened my eyes to the infinite educational potential of smartphones in the classroom.

Are your students more interested in checking Facebook or playing Candy Crush than the material you’re covering? While mobile devices have long been verboten in the college classroom, if students are prioritizing time killers over learning, the problem may not really be the phone. After all, if students aren’t interested, they don’t need a phone to be distracted (yesterday’s students certainly found ways to escape, too, whether through pencil and paper, a window with a view, or communicating with classmates). Ultimately, distraction itself is nothing new, mobile devices are just the latest way students use to escape a course they don’t find interesting.

Your enemy as an instructor isn’t mobile phones: it’s distraction itself. Instead of taking an oppositional view to any and all cell phone use in the classroom, there are many ways to embrace technology that can get distracted students engaged and teach them how to transform their mobile devices into tools they can use in the classroom and later on in the workplace, an approach that can have the dual benefit of helping students learn to manage distractions while also covering the material required by your course.

Cell phones have had a checkered past in schools. When students first started bringing them to class, educators were fairly united in their opposition to the devices on grounds that they were a distraction and a means for easy cheating.

But thanks to an exponential increase in ubiquity and computing capacity, today’s smartphones make BYOD a feasible answer to many of the challenges that 1:1 programs face. They offer endless possibilities for higher engagement, enhancement of student understanding and extension of learning beyond the classroom, particularly if a student doesn’t have internet at home or attends a school where 1:1 is not an option. Smartphones also provide an easy way for teachers to “facilitate and inspire student learning and creativity” while increasing motivation, as espoused by the ISTE Standards for Teachers.

Best of all, research shows that when students are engaged in their learning — and they’re almost always engaged with their phones when given a choice — they are less likely to succumb to distractions. The goal is to give students ways to use this beloved technology to learn, collaborate, share and create in meaningful ways.

Here are six ways to use students’ smartphones that are sure to engage and inspire:

Moving From Lecture to Learning remains at the top for another week. This post is essential for innovative educators looking forward to #backtoschool strategies that go beyond the lecture. Also at the top is a topic on every teacher’s mind as they prepare for #backtoschool. Classroom set up and design. This post looks at what various classroom designs are inviting students to do. 

Moving up this week is a post that looks beyond students getting the right answers and onto how they can ask better questions.  

Making it's way to the top for the first time is an ethical response guide for educators whose students request their friendship on Facebook.  

Also at the top is a post that asks teachers to consider if the professional development they provide or attend contains the five qualities that are necessary for success. Check out that post to see what those qualities are.

Rounding out the top is a post that provides strategies to get to the thinking faster with alternatives to note taking. 

If any of these posts are of interest, check em out and share with others using the buttons below on Twitter, Facebook, email or whichever platform you like best.