New educational uses of cellphones are challenging the 鈥渢urned off and out of sight鈥� rules that many districts have adopted for student cellphones on campus.
A growing number of teachers, carefully navigating district policies and addressing their own concerns, are having students use their personal cellphones to make podcasts, take field notes, and organize their schedules and homework.
And some recent, positive examples of how the phones are being used for academic learning may eventually lead to more nuanced policies. Indeed, more educators are concluding that cellphones may be the only realistic way their schools can offer the 1-to-1 computing experiences that better-funded schools provide with laptops.
鈥淚n our district, especially at high school, students have a cellphone on them at all times, just like a pencil鈥攊t鈥檚 an underused tool,鈥� said Rosemary Miller, the technology-integration specialist for secondary schools in the Buhler, Kan., public schools. 鈥淲e don鈥檛 have a computer for every kid, as some school districts do.鈥�
Ms. Miller has helped teachers at Buhler High School learn how to use , a free Web-based service that allows anyone to create a page鈥攁s well as more specialized 鈥渃hannels鈥� and playlists鈥攖o host podcasts. Students are given a phone number and a personal identification number; they call in using their cellphones and record an audio file that is posted directly on the Web page, Ms. Miller said.
At Buhler High, a Spanish teacher who is 鈥渧ery low-tech,鈥� according to Ms. Miller, created a channel for her Spanish 3 and 4 students to call from outside of school and record themselves speaking in Spanish. 鈥淪he had them select an excellent Spanish poet; they got on their cellphones and said, 鈥�Me llamo鈥� and their name, and [in Spanish] 鈥業鈥檇 like to present this poet, Pablo,鈥� and then they read the poem.鈥�
Similarly, a French teacher had students make podcasts about recipes for French dishes, such as cr猫me br没l茅e, and an English teacher asked her students, for a unit on War in Literature, to use their cellphones to interview someone who has experienced war.
鈥淚 guess this is replacing when you used to take a tape recorder and talk to your grandpa about the war,鈥� Ms. Miller said.
Another application Ms. Miller has had her teachers try is using the cellphone as a classroom-response device. lets anyone post a poll or multiple-choice questionnaire that others can complete using cellphone texting.
鈥淚t鈥檚 kind of like the cellphone as clickers,鈥� Ms. Miller said, referring to the hand-held devices provided with proprietary classroom-response systems, which have a hefty price tag. One fact that she learned by doing the demonstration, however, was that many of her teachers did not know how to send text messages.
鈥楤est Resources Available鈥�
Podcasting and classroom-response systems are among the more than 100 uses of cellphones that educator Liz Kolb has collected, and in some cases invented, for her book Toys to Tools: Connecting Student Cell Phones to Education, published in October.
鈥淭here weren鈥檛 any ideas for a long time about using cellphones at school, said Ms. Kolb, a doctoral candidate at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and an adjunct professor at Madonna University in Detroit. She confesses that, in her earlier job as a high school technology coordinator in Ohio, she 鈥渨as someone who wrote policies against cellphone use.鈥�
Educators note that restrictive cellphone policies鈥攅ven blanket bans鈥攁re born of worrisome reports or direct knowledge that some students have used cellphones to cheat, disrupt classroom activities, bully, communicate with adults they shouldn鈥檛 be talking to, and take unauthorized or inappropriate images of teachers or students for uploading to the Web.
Ms. Kolb, however, said she had an 鈥渆piphany鈥� when she learned to produce a podcast, leading to the two-year project to write the book. 鈥淲e never had enough funds for technology in school. But the moment I tried that cellphone audio blog, I immediately realized that our students have one of the best resources available to them,鈥� she said.
One key to the cellphone鈥檚 usefulness is the wealth of Web-based services that have cropped up recently, not necessarily marketed for schools but generally free in their basic versions. 鈥淥f course, they all have premium upgrades, or if they don鈥檛 have upgrades, you see ads,鈥� Ms. Kolb cautioned.
In addition to podcasting and polling, other Web services include messaging sites that teachers can use to assign homework or give students quizzes. In the latter example, students can call in or text their responses, which can be stored on the site so teachers can evaluate students鈥� progress over time. Those services, incidentally, do not offer the security and error-free performance that would be needed for high-stakes testing, but are fine for giving teachers鈥� quick takes on classroom learning, according to experts.
In addition, Web-based organizers are available to bail out disorganized adolescents. For example, , a service launched in September 2008 by Montana 17-year-old Andrew Schaper, lets users log their school assignments via e-mail or text messages. Students, including partners in joint projects, can arrange to receive 鈥渁ssignment due鈥� notices to their cellphones or e-mail accounts.
Beyond Classrooms
Cellphones with cameras also have great potential for simple data collection. They can enrich fieldwork or field trips by allowing students to snap images of, say, leaves, for later identification. Students also can snap pictures of museum exhibits and placards to fuel classroom discussions.
鈥淢obile citizen journalism鈥� is another popular trend that schools can harness, Ms. Kolb said, though she did not know of any school newspapers doing it extensively yet. 鈥淪chools can definitely set up their own mobile journalism text-messaging numbers,鈥� so students who are traveling can phone in reports and images, especially if they find themselves in the midst of breaking news.
Middle schools and high schools have been the main dabblers in cellphone-learning experiments, but even some elementary schools are getting their toes wet.
Ted A. Lysiak, the director of instructional technology for the 6,300-student Euclid, Ohio, district, recently held training on Gcast for technology-resource teachers at several elementary schools.
This winter, he said, cellphones will accompany students in grades 3 through 5 on field trips鈥攖o a concert and to an arboretum鈥攖hough firmly under the control of a teacher. Students will have a list of questions; they will take turns calling in their responses and reflections to a Gcast page.
鈥淣inety-five percent of cellphone activities are better done outside the classroom,鈥� noted Ms. Kolb, adding that emphasizing outside activities means that students can spend classroom time analyzing the content that has been collected or recorded, rather than fussing with technology issues. Emphasizing off-campus cellphone use also helps teachers work within the more restrictive school district rules.
鈥楽martphone鈥� Potential
Standard cellphones, of course, are dowdy relatives to smartphones, such as iPhones and Blackberries, that today get the bulk of popular attention and advertising.
Ms. Kolb said she avoided applications of 鈥渟martphones"鈥攂asically, powerful Internet-connected computers鈥攂ecause their high cost raises serious questions about budget and the equity of access.
Even with standard cellphones, she said, educators must make sure that all students understand the price structure of their calling plans, including the number of text messages that they can send and receive at no additional charge.
鈥淧hilosophically, we don鈥檛 want to ask the family to pay that sort of thing,鈥� she said. When not all students have cellphones, she said, educators should encourage sharing.
Similarly, educators need to exercise tact with regard to assignments using cellphones. 鈥淵ou don鈥檛 want middle school students coming home from school [and telling their parents] that they need a cellphone,鈥� Ms. Kolb says.
Fortunately, many cellphone ideas can be implemented using regular telephones or home computers, too.
Because smartphones can be loaded with full-featured computer programs, plenty of software companies are working on educational applications. 鈥淚 really do think smartphones are going to be one of the real game-changers in education in next five to 10 years,鈥� said Mr. Lysiak, 鈥渂ecause of their [declining] cost and their capabilities.鈥�
Once smartphones become widely affordable, he said, 鈥渟tudents are walking around with 24/7 connection to the world that they can use for research purposes, publishing purposes, and connecting purposes.鈥�
Equally important, he said, harnessing mobile communications will help schools stay relevant to students.
鈥淚n our district, we really feel students are bored with the instruction they are getting,鈥� he said. 鈥淚t鈥檚 not that instruction has become boring, it鈥檚 that the outside world they interact with has become so engaging, but we haven鈥檛 kept up.鈥�
