Don't Hang Up on Students' Futures

By Ira David Socol, Grand Rapids Press (Opinion)

12/8/07

In a classroom with 60 future teachers I tried an experiment. "Everybody have their mobile phones?" I asked. They looked surprised. "OK," I told these Michigan State University students, "you have 15 minutes to receive a text message. The message must say (1) where the person is, (2) what they ate for lunch today, and (c) when they were born."

I offered extra credit if the response came from outside the United States, or if it was in another language. The room was filled with fingers flying across tiny keypads, and quickly we had more responses than students. "What could we do with this information?" I asked. "Graph it? Map it? Analyze it? Translate the French, German, Spanish and Urdu messages?"

The idea wasn't original. It had arrived in a You-Tube link from a friend after a College of Education debate about phones in the classroom. Many argued they didn't belong.

I argued that mobile phones are the most powerful communication and information device ever created, and that they are already everywhere. How can we not, I asked, use and teach with such a remarkable tool?

My ideas about mobile phones in education are not original. Educators worldwide are using this technology to deliver content, to allow intra-classroom communication (students text answers to teachers), as handheld calculators, to take photos documenting experiments, as voice recorders, to play podcasts, in language learning, to support and encourage writing, and where phones connect to the Internet -- to access to the world's greatest library. Educators in dozens of nations are developing and supporting "mobile learning" initiatives. My class has looked at how these new technologies support diverse learners -- including those with learning, attention and behavioral "disabilities."

But recently I read about the East Grand Rapids school board banning cell phone and iPod use, a policy similar to other West Michigan districts. Why? I wondered, in a state desperate to prepare our children for a new global economy, would we ban these tools?

A June "Technology & Learning" magazine article said, "If we could get past our fear of the unknown and embrace the very tools we are blocking (also essential tools for the global economy), we could build much more motivating and rigorous learning environments. We also have an opportunity to teach the ethics and the social responsibility." The article noted that today's students have "information and communication containers" different than those of past generations -- mobile phones, iPods, blogs, computers, instant messaging and video games instead of the pens, paper, books and chalkboards that served past generations.

"Yes," I tell teachers, "phones can cause problems." I hold up my hand, still scarred from where a friend stabbed me with a pencil in fifth-grade. The school did not ban pencils because of my injury. Nor did it ban paper when students used it to write notes to friends, to cheat, or to graffiti the walls.

Today's students will graduate into a world of digital instant communication and the mobile phone will be at least as essential as all the old technologies -- pens and pencils, books and paper, card catalogs and typewriters. Students not experienced with iPods will be at a disadvantage in language classes. Students who cannot search information quickly and effectively will be unable to do college-level research or function at all in graduate school, or to hold most jobs. Students who cannot communicate well by email and text-message will be in trouble. Yet schools resist teaching these things.

My lesson in text-message research is just one I provide. I encourage laptops, and have students look things up for the class. I encourage email debate. I expect, and discuss, use of Google, Google Scholar, Wiktionary and Wikipedia. New technologies scare schools.

I have an 1842 educational journal which tells teachers not to fear the newest technology -- the chalkboard. The fear of computers and mobile phones are simply part of a long pattern. We must help our students navigate the world that is their future. We cannot do that if we keep the technologies which will define that future out of our schools.

[Ira David Socol is a Ph.D student in Special Education Technology at Michigan State University. He lives in Holland.]