“Cell phone-free classroom” good for students, teacher says

[jaywalker]

3 minutes ago, LannaGuy said:

Thais and their phones are like monkey's and their bananas. I'd like restaurants to be phone free too!   

Also sidewalks.

[Mianoinadme]

47 minutes ago, Prairieboy said:

Any students I interact with have the attention span of a flea.  Asking them to multi-task (listen to the teacher and play Angry Birds) is a recipe for failure.  Oops - I forgot you can't fail a student!

 

And the student can fail you. Those foreigners who take the most phones away might not be here next term. 

[amvet]

Many of the more entrepreneurial students are making money broadcasting from the classroom for guys who like that kind of thing.  No phones would cut off a good source of income for the family. You have to think of all the angles to get the proper picture of Thai students.  

[ldiablo72]

Time are changing and the future will be all about technology. Why not embrace it instead of fighting it.

[sweatalot]

Long overdue 

but it should be “cell-phone-free- school

[jaywalker]

10 minutes ago, sweatalot said:

Long overdue 

but it should be “cell-phone-free- school

Yep.

 

Several years ago I bought my step-daughter a 6,000 baht phone. She was about 13 or 14.

 

She had it with her when a kid jokingly pushed her into a pool at school.

 

POOF! Daddy's out 6,000 baht & nope. I'm NOT going to buy you a new one young lady.

 

Her mother had told her umpteen times to not take it to school.

Edited July 23, 2017 by jaywalker

[amvet]

30 minutes ago, jaywalker said:

Yep.

 

Several years ago I bought my step-daughter a 6,000 baht phone. She was about 13 or 14.

 

She had it with her when a kid jokingly pushed her into a pool at school.

 

POOF! Daddy's out 6,000 baht & nope. I'm NOT going to buy you a new one young lady.

 

Her mother had told her umpteen times to not take it to school.

You should have shopped around - waterproof model.  I always carry mine in case anyone wants to take a late night dip.  5000 baht for a Samsung refurbished S5.

[amvet]

1 hour ago, ldiablo72 said:

Time are changing and the future will be all about technology. Why not embrace it instead of fighting it.

Educators are like Kodak and Polaroid and Blockbuster.  Blind to innovation.  

[ben2talk]

This is news?

When I was teaching, I expected students to put their phones on the desk - face down in front of them. We had a WiFi connection and I encouraged them all to have a phone... at least one or two times during each session I would set them a task and tell them that they should compete - books vs phones or something similar.

 

They're excellent tools - but require extreme discipline. They should certainly be allowed, but with obvious control.

[ben2talk]

3 hours ago, jaywalker said:

Yep.

 

Several years ago I bought my step-daughter a 6,000 baht phone. She was about 13 or 14.

She had it with her when a kid jokingly pushed her into a pool at school.

POOF! Daddy's out 6,000 baht & nope. I'm NOT going to buy you a new one young lady.

Her mother had told her umpteen times to not take it to school.

Something's wrong with this. Anyone else spot it?

 

Since when was it acceptable to 'jokingly' push anyone into a pool? This isn't an argument against phones, it's an argument about parenting and letting your kids suffer bullying.

 

There's no reason children should not be allowed to carry phones, they should merely be prevented from interfering with education and social development.

[PremiumLane]

So a bunch of old codgers who know little or nothing about education think it is a great idea - how about asking the students? Maybe they are more interested in their phones because the lessons are so dull.

 

Novel idea, ask the students what they want

[rijb]

3 hours ago, amvet said:

Educators are like Kodak and Polaroid and Blockbuster.  Blind to innovation.  

Cell phones are a reality.  There is no reality in classrooms.

 

Keep the cell phones, get rid of the classrooms.

[connda]

Absolutely!  This would be akin to teachers allowing students to read a comic book in class in my day.  Smartphones are a distraction that have no place in the classroom.  

[dinsdale]

Just now, JAG said:

It's not new, my school has been doing it for years...

This just isn't news and yes Jag it isn't new by a long way. Strange how they always get the prettiest girls for these staged shots. Whenever there are presentations at my school to the big shots, etc it's always the most beautiful teacher, girl in the office that does it.

[JAG]

This just isn't news and yes Jag it isn't new by a long way. Strange how they always get the prettiest girls for these staged shots. Whenever there are presentations at my school to the big shots, etc it's always the most beautiful teacher, girl in the office that does it.

We're run by nuns - they don't seem to bother too much about that...

[DavisH]

13 hours ago, LazySlipper said:

Once again I will say... we did not have them when  we were younger. Hell no computers when I was in High school...

The computer was the library and the index cards we had to use to do our research.

Thi difference is that we put a lot of effort into getting the knowledge so we valued it more. Nowadays, kids can find any information in seconds. Ias them 5 minutes later about it and they will have totally forgotten! The technology is available but it is not used in the correct way...the internet is full of BS but kids haven't learned to discriminate between that and refereed / peer reviewed material. 

 

Our school has also banned the use of phones all day - collected in the morning and returned at 4pm. Mid terms are coming up so lt's see if there has been any positive effect on their grades. 

[DavisH]

5 hours ago, ben2talk said:

This is news?

When I was teaching, I expected students to put their phones on the desk - face down in front of them. We had a WiFi connection and I encouraged them all to have a phone... at least one or two times during each session I would set them a task and tell them that they should compete - books vs phones or something similar.

 

They're excellent tools - but require extreme discipline. They should certainly be allowed, but with obvious control.

We return the phones for particular classes, as needed. The teacher involved needs to get them from the office, sign them out and return them at the end of the class. 

[ben2talk]

49 minutes ago, DavisH said:

Thi difference is that we put a lot of effort into getting the knowledge so we valued it more. Nowadays, kids can find any information in seconds. Ias them 5 minutes later about it and they will have totally forgotten! The technology is available but it is not used in the correct way...the internet is full of BS but kids haven't learned to discriminate between that and refereed / peer reviewed material. 

 

Our school has also banned the use of phones all day - collected in the morning and returned at 4pm. Mid terms are coming up so lt's see if there has been any positive effect on their grades. 

Good points here. 

 

It is actually very challenging to come up with a practical plan that will work - some aspects of education can be helped.

 

I once planned a 4 stage progressive class with slightly repetetive tasks. The first time students were given an outline and time to think, then presented with a task and allowed to use tablets and phones to help and do research. The second time they were each given a dictionary. The third time was a competition with two teams - one with tech and the other without.

 

The main aim of the class was to let them find out for themselves how much benefit they genuinely gained from 1. Access and 2. Denial.

 

It was a close call - neither side won, they both had benefits. However, after this preparation I had no problems controlling the class. With something as personal as mobile devices it's challenging to manage without offending the owners. That's why often a blanket ban works best.

 

[sandemara]

I've found current mobile phone translation apps, for practical use, inadequate. As educational tools they are woeful.  But I can recall a time when pocket calculators were also suspect, persona non-grata in the classroom. Now, they're just another math instrument, a standard requirement in examination sessions.

No doubt translation apps will get better and, in time, get blessings from leaders in academia.

I once tried arguing that, similarly,  dictionaries (Thai-English, English-Thai dictionaries) should be permitted  in exams in English-language courses.

Traditionalists shuddered at the prospect, but I think such ideas will eventuate.by consensus anyway.

I don't mind students using mobiles in class as long as they help prompt thinking or expand an individual's knowledge or understanding. It's easy enough to spot and identify students who use them as an escape from the learning environment. Such phones are sin-binned, no problem.

[DavisH]

21 minutes ago, sandemara said:

I've found current mobile phone translation apps, for practical use, inadequate. As educational tools they are woeful.  But I can recall a time when pocket calculators were also suspect, persona non-grata in the classroom. Now, they're just another math instrument, a standard requirement in examination sessions.

No doubt translation apps will get better and, in time, get blessings from leaders in academia.

I once tried arguing that, similarly,  dictionaries (Thai-English, English-Thai dictionaries) should be permitted  in exams in English-language courses.

Traditionalists shuddered at the prospect, but I think such ideas will eventuate.by consensus anyway.

I don't mind students using mobiles in class as long as they help prompt thinking or expand an individual's knowledge or understanding. It's easy enough to spot and identify students who use them as an escape from the learning environment. Such phones are sin-binned, no problem.

Once we allowed dictionaries to be used in an exam. Some kids thought they'd just use the dictionary instead of learning the meaning. It backfired for them because it took them ages to find just one word:) Some didn't finish the exam. 

 

Technology has its place be its use needs to be taught...there are plenty of apps that can be used for graphing all kinds of functions with makes it a great tool for learning. It can take a long time to do just one graph by hand.

 

Websites like kahoot https://kahoot.it/#/ are also very useful for teaching, not to mention virtual classrooms like edmodo and google classroom.

 

Technology can be used in the classroom but it needs structured and close supervision .