Setting up Guidelines

I like the thought of allowing them access only if it is for academic purposes. I have found that many students will quickly look up a word they do not understand the meaning of or work on some research while they are in between tasks. While these are obvious "academic" uses for the cell phone, what else qualifies? I have had students say they are asking a friend for homework. I have had students say that they need to check something on another teachers website. Assuming all of these statements are truthful- though some have been obvious lies- how do we draw the line? While many of these examples have been academic uses, they could also wait a little while to do them also. I have not yet figured out how to draw the line and so far I have simply given my students a lot of leeway in their definition of academic. As mentioned before, some have quite blatently been lies while some are truth.

I have not yet been able to figure out a all encompassing policy- if one exists. I am curious to find out how others have handled this.

0 members like this

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Lisa Velmer Nielsen on January 5, 2013 at 6:09pm

It's natural for students to want to use their devices for social reasons just as adults do. When I teach I let students know that there will be time for a break built in. It is at that time that they can do things of a personal nature on their phones, talk to peers, use the restroom, etc.

As far as a policy, I personally haven't had to implement one. Students know what they are to do and that they will be asked to share. How they get there is up to them. However, you may want to put up a poster like this one http://theinnovativeeducator.blogspot.com/2012/09/cell-phone-etique...

Another idea is to work with students to create policy as the teacher in this article did http://theinnovativeeducator.blogspot.com/2010/02/three-important-l...

Permalink Reply by Jennifer Esch on April 17, 2013 at 7:18pm

I haven't had this problem with cell phones with my current group of students, but I've had a similar problem with my middle school students and Google Chat, particularly when they've been given time in class to work on long-term assignments so that they can get teacher and peer assistance. Our group of teachers ended up having students sign a contract which also outlined the consequences of being on chat unnecessarily (the details of which had input from students). It's a similar idea as what Lisa mentioned in terms of creating a policy, but a slight twist in terms of taking a contract/agreement focus rather than a rules/policy focus.

RSS

Welcome to
Classroom 2.0

Sign Up
or Sign In