Final Reflection: Cell Phones and Education

Final Reflection: Cell Phones and Education

Final Reflection Blog Post

Cell phones in the classroom:  Good, Bad, and?  

She looks around furtively, and then glances back at the land-of-the-unknown; otherwise known as under her desk.  She thinks I don't see her.  But she has underestimated the strength of my vision.  Cold eyes trained from years of my own desk-texting escapades, I see her clearly.  She slips her phone back into her backpack. We make eye contact.  She glances down and away quickly in escape.  

Secretive cell phone use in high school and junior high classrooms is a widespread phenomenon.  Classes are regularly disrupted with the confiscation of a student's most prized possession.  The miniature Pandora's boxes are covered in brightly colored sticky notes, and then sent to the cavern of horrors (interpretation: principal's office).  Students must check their phones out after class, sometimes with additional warnings or actual consequences.  I have heard that some schools send students to detention if they are caught with a phone in class, particularly in junior high.

Over the course of the past school year, I have learned and grown as a student teacher.  I have become fully immersed in the school culture, and I have experienced many different classroom environments and situations.  I have heard many teacher's opinion on cell phone use, and the effects of cell phone use on their learning experience.   I have also seen cell phones used quite often for academic purposes, and I wrote about such an experience in an earlier blob post in which I wrongly interpreted the usage of a cell phone belonging to a young foreign exchange student.  The student had been using her phone as a translator, in order to help her finish an assignment.  I had asked her to put her phone away, and she quickly informed me that she had been using it for academic purposes.  I felt immediately guilty for calling her out, but based on my previous observations, it wasn't an entirely unreasonable assumption.

 After this interaction and many more similar in confrontation (but with different outcomes) I became curious.  How were students actually using their phones in class?  When were they most likely to use them for academic purposes?  What were they using them for?  And finally, the question that I began pondering this question, "how does that academic use of cell phones impact student learning?".  I began talking with students, and making notes of what I was seeing in my classes.  I eventually decided to give students in my 10th grade college prep English classes an anonymous survey regarding their cell phone usage.

While passing out the surveys, I assured students that their answers would be completely anonymous and that I would hold nothing against them, regardless of what they answered.  Students laughed at this when I said it, but were fairly frank and open with their responses.

The survey included one short response: "If you use your phone in class, what do you usually use it for?" as the starting question, followed by 3 multiple choice questions.

The results of my survey showed that out of a population size of 60 students, only 3 did not use their phones for academic purposes, or for any other purpose in class.  2 of these students did not own a phone (and were somewhat bitter of that fact--they wrote me notes on the survey about how upset they were) and one student wrote that she had never used her phone in class.  This statistic showed me that the majority of my students had actively used cell phones in class for academic purposes (and many other purposes, as I later discovered through the short answers).  This means that cell phones used for academic purposes play a large role in my students' everyday learning experiences.  This causes me to want to do more research into the overall effectiveness of cell phones as a learning device.

How do students use their cell phones in class? 

These responses also led me to read the short answers given in the first question of the survey, asking "If you use your phone in class, what do you usually use it for?" 
Of the 60 students in my classes, I counted their responses (usually two to three suggestions of use per student) and came up with the following percentages to discuss how my students were using their phones in class:

1.             43.3 % said texting or social media, including Facebook, Instagram, and SnapChat

2.            27.8% said they used their phones as calculators

3.            25% said they used their phones to "look stuff up"

4.            23.3% said "other", which includes playing games, "useless apps", and other educational or divergent purposes. 

5.            18.3% said they use their phones to listen to music in class

6.             17.6% said they used their phones as a dictionary

7.            8% used their phones to look up grades or assignments on EDU

8.            7.6% said they used their phones to access Google Translate. 

This data shows me that over the class period, nearly half my students are likely to use their cell phones for non-academic purposes.  Between 20 and 30 percent of my class will be using their phones for simple, necessary academic purposes.  Less than 20 percent of my class uses their cell phones as a dictionary, which was less than I had previously thought.

I got several written responses that "apps were useless" and "apps are lame", (liberty of inference, academic apps).  Teachers should keep this student opinion in mind when attempting to use apps for education.  While some students may be into it, assume that not every single one of your students will think you are cool for letting them use educational apps on their phones in class.

When do students use their cell phones?
My next survey question asked students when they usually used their phones in class.

1.             88.3% said right before or after class

2.            60% said they would use their phones in class if they were having a "really important text message conversation"

3.            55% said they would use their phones when the class seemed boring

4.            35% said they would use their phones if they were doing independent work in class

5.            33.3% said they would use their phones if they had to do group work in class

6.            25% said they would use their phone if "something interesting is 'going down' on Facebook, Instagram, etc

These answers showed me that the majority of my students used their phones with the most frequency directly before or after class. I thought this was interesting, because it showed some aspect of respect in lack of cell phone usage, and it also showed that students assumed I meant when they most often used their phone for non-academic purposes, even though that was not what I asked.  Students must have immediately associated phone usage with non-academic work.

I also learned through these statistics that students were most likely to use their phones if they were "bored" or doing independent work.  This result relates back to my previous musings about cell phone usage.  I wondered if students used their devices for non-academic purposes when the vibrance, rigor, and pace of the class was such that they were intellectually, emotionally, and socially lulled or driven to escape.  I saw the difference in how and for what purpose students used cell phones in class as directly related to how teachers presented content, and I see nothing in my data to prove my hypothesis invalid.


How often do you use your phone for academic purposes?

I was curious as to how often students actually used their cell phones for academic proposes. The answer was rather unexpected.
Of the 60 students:

1.             57.6% said they used their phones "often, 2-3 times per week or more".  One student wrote a note to me and told that she uses her phone "100 times per day! I would probably be failing without it!"  The jury is still out on the accuracy of that statement, but the emotional is valid and apparent. 

2.             Several students actually added a category in the margins, which included 2 responses of "5 times or more per day" "1-10 times per day" "very often" and another "100 times per day"

3.            18.3% said they used their phones for academic purposes about once per week

4.            5% of students said they used their phones for academic purposes about once every 2-3 weeks

5.            1.6% said they used their phones for academic purposes once every month or less.

This shows me that for the majority of my students, cell phones are a vital part of their academic lives and, if we are to take the above quoted student as an example, potentially related to the academic success.

These results are incredibly influential to my teaching practice.  What I had previously wondered about technology usage in my classroom became reality through data on paper.  The responses of my students showed me that I was right.  Technology is a tool of the opportunist.  If students are permitted to use their phones for non-academic purposes through the non-interactive and slow pacing of the classroom, they will.  But if the format of the classroom and the rigor and relevance of the content is such that students engage, cell phones are transformed into a tool for seeking knowledge.  I'm not say that students won't use their phones to goof around while they are in a fantastic, vibrant classroom situation.  I'm just saying it's more likely.  Look at the statistics above: while 60% said they would continue a "really important conversation" into the classroom (assume that this could be regardless of class dynamic), a close 55% said that they would use a phone if the class was boring.  These results show that the dynamic of the class is almost strong enough to equal the pull of an extremely important conversation.  For socially oriented teens, this is huge.
So teachers, if you want to see inappropriate cell phone use decline, make your classes interesting.  This might not solve the cell phone problem, but it is certainly a step in the right direction.




Reflection on Technology and Education: 

Over the course of this class, I have been exposed to more extreme and varied educational technology than I could have ever imagined.  And instead of feeling lured in by the shiny countered edges and beautiful colored graphs, I have actually have ended up feeling felt repulsed by the majority of "advances" in education.  The final class and mini research presentation scared me.  Google glass? 3-D printers of human flesh and organs?  Customized advertising?  Extensive and extremely personal student information available in widespread national data systems accessible by teachers, admin, the government, and private/public corporations?  Desks with iPad screens?

 As a humanities major, I had a brief and momentary nightmare of a loss of humanity somewhere in the glass and silicon rimmed future world.  I saw the end of the earth and education as we know it.  And I was scared.

After a few nights of traumatic apocalyptic dreams, I finally awoke to the realization that this brave new world I so dreaded would never happen--at least in my lifetime.  I hope to be part of a world with working iPads, desktops, and projectors in classrooms for heaven's sake.  I don't even have a darn working projection system in my classroom--much less a futuristic departing from traditional human life and experience.  My terror gradually died away as I realized that I had the opportunity to fight broken desktops all week.  Humanity would still exist as we know it, amongst the piles of broken technology and musty old textbooks.  Nothing would ever change, at least, not now.  Humanity will keep on struggling along, with its primeval whiteboards and 2-D educational experiences, at least for a few years longer (or until public schools actually get funded by some other means than cereal boxtops and the PTSA).

The most practically impactful part of this class has learning to use Google documents.  Honestly, this has revolutionized my experience as a student, and as a teacher.  It is incredible to have so many things so centralized, and accessible anywhere with a computer and internet access.  Bravo, Google, well done.  I now use Google docs for all my lesson plans, handouts, and classroom materials. I even started backing up files on my computer to my Drive.  It has radically changed my life.

This just in:  today, I had students submit an essay assignment to me via Google docs.  Most of them struggled with understanding the basics of the process, but through much hand-holding and step-by-step direction, students were able to accomplish this great feat.  I will certainly use Google docs with my students again, but I will make sure that I take into account their apparent fear of "technology" (cell phone aside) and I will be sure to scaffold every step of the process with them, assuming nothing about their previous experience, comfort level, or expertise with technology.

Thanks Torrey, it's been a great quarter!