Fears of cyber-cheating and sexting in school are so last year
When Dalton McGuinty suggested in September 2010 that cellphones and tablets might have useful educational applications, he was savaged by both the press and his political opponents. The Toronto Sun called the idea a “terrible” surrender to already tech-addled kids who want to use gadgets only for Facebook. The National Post likened it to welcoming cigarettes and sharp objects into class. Even Wired magazine panned the idea of gadgets in school as “premature,” citing the potential for distraction, cyber-cheating and a digital divide between kids with the latest gear and kids without. The Ontario Tories picked up all the outrage and ran with it, slamming the notion as “absurd,” a prime example of just how out of touch McGuinty was, and asking, “Shouldn’t our kids be learning math and science instead?” They went on to suggest that if McGuinty gets his way, we will soon have “sexting” in our classrooms.
The real concerns parents have about bringing cellphones into class are somewhat less lurid. Kids—boys in particular—are thought to be less literate today than they were in the past. The statistics don’t back this up. The last major study conducted in Canada showed that 88 per cent of 13-year-olds were reading at or above their expected levels. Still, the general perception is that technology is the enemy of literacy. What teacher in their right mind would welcome it into their classroom?
As it turns out, there are many. There’s a digital revolution underway in education. A new generation of teachers is embracing the use of classroom technology. They want to harness the fascination kids have with glowing screens and direct it toward learning. This transition is natural for kids, but painfully hard for schools. The truth is, smart phones threaten to disrupt decades of common practice in the classroom. And that’s a good thing. Changes to the way we teach and test our kids are long overdue.
Last May, with much teacher support and little parental opposition, the TDSB voted to lift the cellphone ban that had been enacted in 2007. Granted, many teachers were simply fed up with having to enforce it in every school hallway, obligated as they were to confiscate cellphones from defiant students. But a growing contingent of educators was also eager to experiment with gadgets in class, so long as they had the authority to dictate how and when they were used. These voices prevailed, and trustees spoke excitedly of stepping into “21st-century learning” and an “enhanced” educational environment.
While hand-helds are now technically admissible, the board also temporarily allowed individual principals to prolong the ban, and most have chosen to do so. Today, more than six months since the vote and halfway into a new school year, cellphones, smart phones and tablets (or “personal technology devices,” as the board calls them) are still forbidden in most of the TDSB’s almost 600 schools.
Smartphones in the classroom are making kids even lazier. My sister is a teacher and when she writes a note on the board, the kids don’t copy it down…they take a photo with their phone instead.
December 20, 2011 at 12:04 pm | by JasonDa yEr 2011 wil go down in history as d year wen phones got smarter n ppl got stupider.
December 20, 2011 at 7:47 pm | by BG011” It’s hard to think of a real-world challenge where you are placed in silent isolation with paper and pen, left to rely exclusively on memory.”
I have been saying this since I was in Grade 10 back in 2006…
However, I now realize there are some basic life skills that one must know of the top of there head. In my opinion, most concepts taught in high school is a basic life skill that we should all know from memory. On the other hand, university is a different story. University exams should limit time but allow aids such as internet access.
Also on a side note, someone should really raise awareness of and do an article on the high school English system. English classes in high school that make students read literature that is not of our time (i.e. Shakespearean novels) are almost completely useless. Prove me wrong. The English is old and rarely used today. The grammar is incorrect by today’s standards. What is the point? Reading is supposed to enhance our language skills.
December 21, 2011 at 12:01 pm | by raise_your_weaponAs a father of kids still attending high school this is a perplexing and difficult decision.
December 22, 2011 at 9:29 am | by Cosmo MannellaThe reality ALL kids have some device or another and they ALL take them to school (hidden or not).
We are in a Technology Revolution and we must accept it.
My first reaction is to allow them and monitor them.
If they are banned they will still use them in the washrooms or in some dark corner.
Cosmo Mannella
I have mixed feelings about the use of smart phones in school. However, the board(s) need to find a way to incorporate them into the classroom environment. For example, implement curriculum around “emerging technologies” and work the smart phones into the equation.
December 22, 2011 at 10:53 am | by UniquenamehereWe have to admit that we are in a technology revolution. We could see 2-year olds functioning an iPad perfectly and a 3-year old knowing how to set up the WiFi to print to a network computer. Because we are still in the early stages of this revolution, we do not know what it will make of human beings when changes occur to our education system.
If you have understood the education system, you would have graduated from high school with transferable skills – critical thinking skills, communication skills, time management skills, planning skills, skills to work independently and with people. And most importantly: to become a literate citizen. In fact, our goal was never to have you understand how to do deriviatives, or to have you recite Shakespeare, or to force you to memorize the macromolecules in biology. Those people who hated school because they thought what they had learnt was useless….are the failed products of the system.
So skills and finding one’s capacity to create is the essence of education. With technology, one cannot forget to fear that it will only hinder creativity. “There must be an App out there to solve my problem.” Yes, kids today can find things to do things for them. As a result, they do lose the capacity to think on their own. A tip calculator is just one of the many things that kids cannot figure out now. How much tip do we have to pay? What is the split? How much change should I get back? What about the GPS system so that map reading and thinking skills can be thrown out the window? We don’t even need to know what north, east, south, west means anymore.
We are entering a counter-revolution indeed. A very small percentage of people are getting more intelligent (hence the invention of even better technology and such), while the majority of people are becoming less capable, less intelligent, and less human. Those are the ones in our education system.
So are we moving forward? Only if those gadgets allow students to think, and more importantly, to make them addicted to thinking, problem solving and creating. With that, we can create even more possibilities that were once thought of as impossible.
-teacher
December 26, 2011 at 6:07 pm | by teacher