Cathie: I just read another article from a teacher who worries about the management issues involved in using cellphones in the classroom. This time I felt compelled to make a comment on the article.
Elliot: You must have been really galled to have actually gone to the trouble of registering at the site in order to add a comment. I have never known you to do something like that!
Cathie: We have to get people to see that there are other ways to use cellphones in the classroom!
Elliot: It is quite reasonable that teachers expect that they will have to use the cellphones the students themselves bring to class.
Cathie: Right! And using those student phones is fraught with challenges – management of the texting and phone calling being paramount.
Elliot: But there is another way: the school provides the cellphone.
Cathie: Yes, and the management problems virtually go away!
Elliot: Kristin Passaretti, a 5th grade teacher in Saratoga Springs, NY, whose class is using school-provided cellphones, put it succinctly:
"We call them cellular computers. They're really smart phones. We don't call them that because they don't use phone capability or text capability, so we have kind of renamed them so the kids don't think they can use them in those ways,"
Elliot: As you pointed out in your comment to the article, some schools call those smartphones “mobile learning devices” to similarly distance the devices from cellphones.
Cathie: Of course, providing cellphone computers aka mobile learning devices aka smartphones to students is a real financial challenge for districts and that’s why teachers use the cellphones already in the students’ pockets.
Elliot: I can feel my blood pressure rising; here we go again. The “No Money in Schools” rationale.
Cathie: Easy now; remember your condition.
Elliot: Very funny; ha ha; ho ho. We need to deal with this “no money” argument!!
Cathie: Yes, Elliot; in another blog posting. <laughing> it’s time you took your beta-blocker.
Elliot: “One of these days, Alice. “
Cathie: You’re not Jackie Gleason…
Elliot: if only….. He’s definitely one of my heroes.
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