Peter Chang, the TDSB superintendent charged with implementing the new tech policy, says his ultimate goal is to allow each teacher to decide what’s best for his or her class. He explains that the TDSB is taking things slow to ensure that smart phones are properly supported and integrated into the board’s policies, infrastructure and training. Chang describes the bureaucratic and logistical nightmare of a potential 250,000 students bringing gadgets to school: the strain the devices will put on Wi-Fi networks; the lack of tech training among staff; issues of compatibility and tech support; and the legal implications—is the board liable if students use the schools’ networks to download pirated music or pornography?
So, instead of bursting the gates open, Chang is slowly nudging along a three-phase implementation process, wherein the board will draft thorough new technology policies, then create and promote learning plans for teachers. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, he’ll study the experiences of the few pilot schools sprinkled throughout the city where gadgets are already in use. The best-case scenario, Chang says, is a board-wide rollout next September.
Teachers who are already experimenting with BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) speak ecstatically of students’ reactions—how engaged and enthusiastic they are about learning. Traditionally, schoolwork has been a one-way conversation between child and teacher, but with BYOD, students are encouraged to post their work on learning blogs and collaborate through apps that let many hands edit a single document.
Cate Cuttle is one of the TDSB’s early adopters. She teaches business at William Lyon Mackenzie Collegiate Institute. A mere two months into her smart phone experiment, she describes their impact as “thrilling.” Not all of her students own devices, so they share. About three quarters of them bring smart phones, then buddy up with partners to do research together. To many kids, gadgets exist exclusively for socializing and video games. Cuttle hopes to teach them that there are other applications. “I absolutely feel a responsibility to prepare them for technology in the real world.”
Royan Lee is a literacy teacher at Beverley Acres, a middle school in Richmond Hill. The school lies within the York Region District board, which never had a ban, so Lee has allowed smart phones in his class for the past three years. He’s now a leading proponent of the practice, which he documents on his Spicy Learning education blog. Every September, Lee tells his Grade 7 students that they’re welcome to bring to class whatever hand-held gadget they own. If a student doesn’t have a device, he pulls one from a box of school-owned gear—a privilege afforded to his funded pilot project.
Lee has no particular strategy for integrating the devices with his teaching. He generally doesn’t limit usage to any specific website or app, or to a predetermined time or unit. He lets students use their devices in class in much the same way that adults use their devices at work—whenever they are helpful and appropriate. Students are free to check Google or Wikipedia for answers or to email him questions they’d prefer not to ask in front of their peers. I asked Lee whether students take advantage of his lax attitude by texting each other and visiting distracting websites. “Sure,” he says. “They also chat verbally with each other, and when it gets in the way of learning I stop that, too. It’s what teachers do.”
The bigger problem for Lee is having to tell his students to put away their phones during standardized tests. All of the online research abilities and collaborative skills he teaches through BYOD are useless in an exam. Lee describes traditional testing as “isolated, high-pressure, rote-memorization” assessment—an anachronistic and false way to gauge a student’s learning.
He’s got a point. 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. Today, solving a problem with the help of technology is not “cheating.” It’s how just about everyone, outside of school, solves just about every problem. Problem solving with the help of a smart phone requires critical thinking, multiple literacies, the ability to analyze information from different sources and some basic tech know-how.
To graduate a student without these abilities is unconscionable.
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