Students researching via mobile devices?

I recently had a student with an internet enabled phone to ask me if he could do his in-class research on his phone. I have three computers that were already in use, and had already sent kids to a lab, and he was one of the few left without access. So I said yes, keep it out where I can see it at all times, follow the school rules on internet access, and stay over here with the other computers. I had him using a phone version of wikipedia wapedia.mobi.

Our policy at our school states that phone use is under the teacher's disgression, and I had no problems that day. As a matter of fact, he probably did more work on his phone than he would have on a computer since he was excited about getting to use his phone.

Anyone else having experience with this? Tips? Concerns? Ideas? I think that as more and more phones come available with this option it might actually lower the strain on low budget schools that are hard stretched to provide internet access. But it will of course require the hashing out of new rules and such.

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Permalink Reply by Shannon McNeice on April 11, 2008 at 5:54pm

I recently had a student who brought her own laptop to school because she had a project stored on it. I soon noticed she was surfing the Internet, but she wasn't connected to the school network via cord or wireless connection. Finally, I realized that she was using her own satellite Internet connection. This was the first time I had seen anyone do this at school, so I directed her to the resources on the library webpage. Soon she took her laptop and moved onto the next class. (I was working in a Gifted and Talented room for the period.) When I asked our tech people, they said that students circumventing the network on our property was strictly prohibited. I would bet that she went through the day with most of the teachers not even realizing what she was doing.

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Permalink Reply by Scott Walker on April 11, 2008 at 10:09pm

I can understand the circumventing idea if the student was misusing the schools network and getting around the filters. But I honestly don't think that we should rule out the idea of students being able to bring in their own tools to help in their learning process. I think rules should be made to harness this, not withhold it.

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Permalink Reply by Shannon McNeice on April 13, 2008 at 4:47pm

I totally agree. It's so frustrating when the IT people are not teachers!

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Permalink Reply by Dave Grewal on April 12, 2008 at 12:21am

That's a really cool story, could he go to any website on his phone?
I know with the iPhone you can surf the net very easily.

This is probably where education is heading, but like you hinted at, regulations and rules for their uses is going to be a tricky subject.

Good Post