Should cell phones be banned in school?, Study notes of Technology

Download Should cell phones be banned in school? and more Study notes Technology in PDF only on Docsity! Should cell phones be banned in school? YES As a former New York City public-school teacher, I can tell you that cell phones don't belong in the classroom. A student with a cell phone is an uninterested student, one with a short attention span who cares more about socializing than education. When I was teaching, all too often I turned around from writing something on the blackboard to find students text- messaging or otherwise playing with their phones. Come the end of the term, a handful of students would fail the class and far too many would drop out of school. The onus for failure should be placed on distractions in the classroom, specifically cell phones. Parents think of cell phones as a connection to their children in an emergency. But I wonder what the last situation was that genuinely called for an immediate phone call to a child. In most cases, contacting the hospital or the police would seem more urgent. And parents can always call the school's main office to reach their children. Cell phones are status symbols for teenagers because when their phone rings while the teacher is talking, everyone laughs. Because playing video games on their cell makes them look cool. Because text messaging their friend in the next room is more fun than learning about topic sentences. So is listening to the new Three 6 Mafia song they just downloaded onto their cell. And saying students can store their phones in the locker is a joke. If they have cell phones, they're going to bring them to class. —Jesse Scaccia Former English teacher, Franklin D. Roosevelt High School, Brooklyn, N.Y. NO Schools make rules to facilitate a quality education in a respectful and safe environment. Cell phones are a distraction in classrooms and have no place there. I support rules banning their use—by students and staff—in the classroom. But cell phones should not be banned from students' possession entirely, because that is, in effect, not allowing students to have cell phones while traveling to and from school. My children's time before school and after should not be under the school's control. Making sure my children have cell phones and can contact me during those times is my right as a parent. It's not just about safety or reassurance. Yes, I want my kids to call each morning when they arrive at school and each afternoon when they leave, and there are so few pay phones anymore on which to do that. But my children's lives are also enriched by the freedom to travel to a variety of extracurricular activities or social engagements without an adult chaperone. That is only possible because an adult is just a phone call away. If my children are not allowed to keep their cell phones during the school day—off and in their backpacks or lockers—the school system is governing my parenting and my children's behavior during non-school time. The school has no such right. Besides, teachers should be teaching, not spending precious time tagging and bagging confiscated electronics. I trust my kids to make responsible and respectful choices, and I trust their teachers and administrators to do the same. —Elizabeth Lorris Ritter Parent, Bronx High School of Science, New York Citation: Ritter, Elizabeth Lorris, and Jesse Scaccia. "Should Cell Phones Be Banned in School?" The New York Times Upfront: The News Magazine for High School. N.P., D.D. Web. 21 Oct. 2013. http://teacher.scholastic.com/scholasticnews/indepth/upfront/debate/index.asp?article=d1211 Lift the Cell Phone Ban By David Rapp Cell phones could become the next big learning tool in the classroom. So why have schools been so slow to embrace them? Without a doubt, cell phones can cause serious disruption in the classroom. From urgent text messages flying across the room to lessons interrupted by rap-song ringtones, these gadgets are responsible for nationwide frustration among educators. And, in extreme cases, students have used their cell phones to cheat on tests and harass other students, even during class time. While such disturbances are certainly a nuisance in school, not all teachers see cell phones as the enemy. In fact, for some, they’ve become a teaching solution. Cell Phone Solution between the alarms, calls, and text-messaging, it’s easy to see why some classrooms have implemented a no-cell phone policy. But educators know that with students, cell phone use in inevitable, so why not use the devices for good? Many schools in Asia and the United Kingdom—where they’ve been using high-speed 3G, or third-generation, cellular networks years longer than the United States—have already turned cell phones into teaching tools. Recently, several school districts in North America have done the same. At the Craik School in Saskatchewan, Canada, such an experiment turned into an integral part of the curriculum. Craik’s program started with a discussion in the staff room between the school’s principal, Gord Taylor, and teacher Carla Dolman. Many of the children had received cell phones for Christmas, and the phones had become a distraction. “So we tossed out the idea of rather than looking at them as an evil thing,” says Taylor, “that we look at them as a tool for learning.” They realized that the text message and alarm functions would be useful for reminding students of homework assignments and tests, for example. They decided to run a pilot project with eighth and ninth graders. Testing the Waters Initially, only about 40 percent of the class had cell phones, but kids who had them were willing to share. The text message function was mainly used at first, but as Dolman became more familiar with the myriad functions, it became clear that these gadgets had a lot more classroom potential. Video and sound recording came into play, and the phones’ Bluetooth networking capabilities allowed for easy information sharing. Dolman found they worked perfectly for her classes’ “lit circles,” in which the students divide into smaller groups to discuss different aspects of a particular book. Previously, she found it difficult to monitor each of the different groups simultaneously. But kids who had video functions on their phones could record their discussions then Bluetooth it to Dolman’s phone, and she could watch each individual discussion, without missing a moment. Dolman says such problems like class disruption were minimal. “It’s a stereotype of teenagers—that you can’t trust them with a cell phone. Our experience was that if you give them the opportunity to use them, and you give them guidelines to go with that use, you won’t have problems.” Principal Taylor agrees. “The one thing we really stressed with the kids was the whole idea of appropriate use,” he says. “They make darn sure that the volume is turned off. A lot of adults need to learn that.” As for the kids, they loved using the phones for class work, but parents in the district have had mixed reactions, says Taylor. “Some thought we were crazy, and were very strongly opposed to it, and some embraced the idea initially. As time went on, about 90 percent came to say it was a good idea. They didn’t see it as a gadget, or as a replacement for learning, they saw it as a tool for learning.” Taylor’s colleagues have been more enthusiastic. “In our school division there are about 90 principals and about 600 teachers, and I would say that out of the principals, there were about 15 to 20 that really were gung-ho and wanted to know what we were doing.” The rest, Taylor says, thought the program was innovative and at least worth a try. “There were no negative thoughts on it whatsoever.” Learning Curves Taylor sees the cell phone as a necessary tool to teach to kids. “We would be burying our heads in the sand if we said that cell phones were not a part of everyday life,” he says. “I don’t know a businessman out there who doesn’t carry a cell phone. I don’t know a lawyer or accountant out there who doesn’t carry a cell phone. Why wouldn’t we have them in phone. Why wouldn’t we have them in schools?” Cell Phones and Text Messaging in Schools – a report by the school safety council 1. Cell phones have been used for calling in bomb threats to schools and, in many communities, cell calls cannot be traced by public safety officials. 2. Student use of cell phones could potentially detonate a real bomb if one is actually on campus. 3. Cell phone use by students can hamper rumor control and, in doing so, disrupt and delay effective public safety personnel response. 4. Cell phone use by students can impede public safety response by accelerating parental response to the scene of an emergency during times when officials may be attempting to evacuate students to another site. 5. Cell phone systems typically overload during a real major crisis (as they did during the Columbine tragedy, WTC attacks, etc.), and usage by a large number of students at once could add to the overload and knock out cell phone systems quicker than may normally occur. Since cell phones may be a backup communications tool for school administrators and crisis teams, widespread student use in a crisis could thus eliminate crisis team emergency communications tools in a very short period of critical time. National School Safety and Security Services has received a number of inquiries after school shootings over the years asking if schools should allow and/or encourage students to carry cell phones in school as a tool for their safety during a school shooting or other crisis. Similar inquiries were received after the Columbine High School attack in 1999 and the September 2001 terrorist attacks on America. We set forth on this page a look at the historical perspective of cell phones in schools, a detailed explanation of how they can detract from safety in a crisis, and recommendations for addressing the current day reality of cell phones and other technology being a part of today's students' lives and how schools must adapt realistically. Cell Phones Disruptive of School Environment From an educational perspective, cell phone use during classes and in other areas of the school can easily present a disruption to the educational environment on a day-to-day basis. School disruptions can come in a number of forms. Ringing cell phones can disrupt classes and distract students who should be paying attention to their lessons at hand. Text message has been used for cheating. And new cell phones with cameras could be used to take photos of exams, take pictures of students changing clothes in gym locker areas, and so on. Cell Phone Use During a Crisis Can Create Less Safe School Emergency Response In terms of school safety, cell phones have been used by students in a number of cases nationwide for calling in bomb threats to schools. In far too many cases, these threats have been difficult or impossible to trace since they have been made by cell phones. The use of cell phones by students during a bomb threat, and specifically in the presence of an actual explosive device, also may present some risk for potentially detonating the device as public safety officials typically advise school officials not to use cell phones, two-way radios, or similar communications devices during such threats. Additionally, experience in crisis management has shown us that regular school telephone systems become overloaded with calls in times of a crisis. While we do recommend cell phones for school administrators and crisis team members as a crisis management resource tool, it is highly probable that hundreds (if not thousands) of students rushing to use their cell phones in a crisis would also overload the cell phone system and render it useless. Therefore the use of cell phones by students could conceivably decrease, not increase, school safety during a crisis. Cell phone use, texting, and other outside communications by students during a crisis also expedites parental flocking to the school at a time when school and public safety officials may need parents to be away from the school site due to evacuations, emergency response, and/or other tactical or safety reasons. This could also actually delay or otherwise hinder timely and efficient parent-student reunification. In extreme situations, it could thrust parents into a zone of potential harm. Cell phone use also accelerates the unintentional (and potentially intentional) spread of misinformation, rumors, and fear. Cell Phones and Text Messaging in Schools Contribute to School Rumors and Fear We also track more and more school incidents across the nation where rumors have disrupted schools and have even resulted in decreased attendance due to fears of rumored violence. The issues of text messaging in particular, and cell phones in general, were credited with sometimes creating more anxiety and panic than any actual threats or incidents that may have triggered the rumors. "We are now dealing with 'Generation Text' instead of 'Generation X'," said Ken Trump, President of National School Safety and Security Services. "The rumors typically become greater than the issue, problem, or incident itself. Attendance can go down overnight and rumors can fly in minutes," he noted. Ken's advice to school and safety officials includes: 1) Anticipate you will have an issue that catches fire like this at some time. Identify ahead of time what mechanisms you will use to counter it. 2) Have redundancy in communications: Web site, direct communications to students and staff, mass parent notifications, letters to go home, etc. 3) Discuss some potential scenarios with your district and building administrators and crisis teams to evaluate what the threshold will be for going full speed on your response communications. If you go full speed on every single rumor, you might need two full-time employees just to counter rumors in one average secondary school. Try to get a feel for at what point a situation might rise to the level of being so disruptive or distractive that it warrants a full-fledged communications counter assault by school and police officials. 4) School and police officials should have unified communications so as to send consistent messages. We train in our emergency preparedness programs for the use of joint information centers (JICs) in a major critical incident response. But even on lower scale incidents, it is important for school leaders to be sending a message consistent with that of public safety officials to their school-communities. 5) Have a formal crisis communications plan and professionally train your administrators and crisis team members on communicating effectively with media and parents. Professional outside communications consultants, district communications staff (for those with such in-house resources), and related specialists can help develop and audit communications plans, and train staff. "The key is to be prepared to fight fire with fire. Today's high-tech world and rapid communications must be countered by school officials who have a solid communications plan for managing rapidly escalating rumors around school safety issues," Trump said. For examples of specific incidents of rumors, many of which were driven by student use of cell phones, see School Threats and Rumors. Cell Phone Policies and Practices in Schools Must Meet the Times But Be Clear and Enforced; Emergency Guidelines and Crisis Communications Plans Must Be Strong School boards and administrators have the final say in whether cell phones are or are not banned in their schools. We respect local control and their right to make these decisions. If a school district chooses to ban cell phones, we support that as we support those districts choosing to allow students to have cell phones in schools. We do believe, however, that school leaders must make a firm decision, set it in written policy, implement it consistently, and communicate expectations to students, parents, and school employees. Equally important is that they enforce their policies in a firm, fair, and consistent manner for the long haul. Saying in writing that the district bans cell phones but in practice allowing them or having a "don't ask, don't tell" practice day-to-day is unacceptable. School administrators allowing students to possess and/or in some fashion use cell phones in schools and/or on school property must provide clear guidelines and expectations to students and parents. They must enforcement them consistently. From a safety, security, and emergency / crisis preparedness perspective, school boards, administrators, crisis teams, and public safety officials must have a detailed conversation on the impact of cell phones on day-to-day school climate, their potential adverse impact on security, and their high-risk for detracting from efficient school emergency response and management in a critical incident. We now strongly encourage school districts to have crisis communications plans to manage and respond in a timely manner to rumors and to communicate on security incidents and in crises. We also advise school and safety officials to develop their emergency plans with the expectation that cell phone use in a criticial incident will accelerate rumors, expedite parental and other flocking to the school, create traffic and human movement management problems, potentially hinder efficient parent-student reunification processes, etc. In short, school and safety officials must "double-down" on their planning and preparedness for issues likely to be created by cell phone use during a crisis. School leaders should talk with students, parents, and staff about their expectations regarding cell phone use during a crisis. There should be candid discussions of how cell phone use can hurt school and first responder efforts to keep students and staff safe during an emergency. And students, parents, and staff should be told how responsible use and non- use during a crisis can help make the situation more safe and less risky than irresponsible use and use at critical times when attention should be given fully to receiving directions from those responsible for keeping everyone safe. School leaders should maintain an adequate number of cell phones on campus for administrators, crisis team members, and other appropriate adults. School and safety officials should seek to provide such equipment as a part of their crisis planning. Additionally, while not necessarily advocating that schools provide cell phones to teachers, we do believe that school policies should allow teachers and support staff to carry their cell phones if they choose to do so. Concluding Thoughts Technology evolves. Society evolves. And so must our thinking on the role of technology, cell phones and other technology in schools. Regardless of whether or not school leaders formally allow or prohibit student cell phones on campus, they must have preparedness plans designed upon the assumption that at least some students will have and use cell phones during a crisis situation. Emergency preparedness guidelines and crisis communications plans must be in place to respond to and manage such conditions. Citation: "School Safety: Cell Phones and Text Messaging in Schools." National School Safety and Security Services. N.P., N.D. Web. 22 Oct. 2013. http://www.schoolsecurity.org/trends/cell_phones.html