I mean it kind of needs to be both. But it’s hard to find a compelling reason why kids need their smartphones fully accessible during class.
Well, you can quickly search up some information. I don’t remember what it was, but I remember that once in middle school teacher said something I wasn’t quite sure about, but also I wouldn’t ask if I wasn’t more sure. So I looked it up, seeing that I was right, I asked if it rather wasn’t meant to be that other thing, he checked too and indeed he was wrong.
Also, my mind often wanders off. And it may happen that I suddenly can’t remember something. Could just be some word I could look up on my phone in less than a minute. Option B: Keep thinking about it till the rest of the class. I can’t stop thinking about that until I either remember or find it.
Next, spine. I am currently in high school. Phones are allowed here. Any time. So, I utilized my scanner and digitized one 500 or so page book I couldn’t find on the internet, and then used it as PDF instead of a physical book. It is less likely that I would forget my phone. I wish schools would have options for e-ink tablets instead of having to carry many heavy physical books. That used to be problem mostly in elementary school and middle school. Same goes for note taking.
Obviously, the last example can be easily solved by modernization.
Fast talking teachers. I can’t write that fast. I mean, I can, but then I can’t decipher my handwriting, which is already hard anyway. Voice recorder is a quick solution. Obviously, it is easier to look through notes than audio, but IT IS NOT MEANT TO BE A REPLACEMENT FOR NOTES, just a help.
But do take that with a pinch of salt. Especially in elementary school, I used to be one of those weird kids who greatly preferred being liked by the teacher over having friends. So even though I had a phone at the time, I never used it during classes because teachers disliked it.
But at least during breaks it should be allowed. Otherwise kids will find much more dangerous ways to entertain themselves.
If you want to teach kids how to look up information, you can create spaces for that. They don’t need unrestricted access to their smart phones to accomplish that throughout the day. Hell you can relax your policies as they grow up and show the maturity to handle having a smart phone in the classroom. If schools want to do that, I am all in favor of it. But they would have to start early and build a system, which is a lot to ask of already overworked educators.
I am not talking about unrestricted access either. It depends on age, but they could always just ask the teacher if they’re allowed to look up something. And also I don’t see how disallowing phones during breaks helps education. It’s meant to be a break.
Option B: Keep thinking about it till the rest of the class. I can’t stop thinking about that until I either remember or find it.
Option C: Write it down.
It’s not like I am thinking about it to not forget what I wanted to remember. It’s that it will keep bugging me until I remember.
I have no idea what you’re trying to say.
Bugging you until you remember? You write it so that you can’t forget and so it stops bugging you.
Bugging you because you need that info itch scratched right now? Aka instant gratification. Then you have to learn to not need instant gratification. Seriously, it’s another skill.
- Juno ( @Juno@beehaw.org ) 3•10 months ago
All this is spoken like an entitled bratty immature kid. (No offense, it’s just your age and you’ll grow out of it)
There’s a reason why you can get a ticket or be charged with distracted driving while you’re on your phone and behind the wheel of a car. IT IS A DISTRACTION. FULL STOP.
Stop lying to yourself and to us in the process.
- Using phone while driving is much bigger issue.
- This phone issue has never affected me personally. I am defending OP and others.
- I am not talking about using the phone all the time for some stupid thing. It gives you access to a lot of information when needed.
Also if you trust kids with making life changing decisions, this is unfair.
Also sorry if I sounded as you described. I only started carrying the phone with me since I was 15. I was too worried about breaking it (it’s not cheap thing). That makes finding positive points (that would apply to younger kids) a bit harder.
Edit: Also, don’t be worried, I would almost never voice my opinions in real life.
- Juno ( @Juno@beehaw.org ) 2•9 months ago
Spoken like an introverted someone who HAS ALREADY been affected socially in a negative way by their cell phone use.
The entitled and bratty part of your comments = when people tell me not to use my phone I simply DONT use it or bring it. What’s the problem exactly? You want access to an encyclopedic knowledge in class? You don’t have a laptop or computer in the room you can use ?
Maybe you use your phone only for the most strictly academic things, but most people don’t.
Finally, I don’t trust kids to make life changing decisions. See all the high schoolers who got suckered into a worthless degree from the University of Phoenix. It’s very fair to take the reigns from people who can’t control themselves and their impulses.
Spoken like an introverted someone who HAS ALREADY been affected socially in a negative way by their cell phone use.
Can’t disagree with this. I got a tablet when I was 8. With unrestricted access. On the positive note, it did help me learn quite a lot of stuff. Like English.
The entitled and bratty part of your comments = when people tell me not to use my phone I simply DONT use it or bring it. What’s the problem exactly? You want access to an encyclopedic knowledge in class? You don’t have a laptop or computer in the room you can use ?
No problem, really. If someone wanted to search up something during class, teachers could just allow it, and generally they did. Except when I was in grade 9 and the school decided to prohibit even just having them at school, as if it were grenades. Some teacher would always just collect all into a bucket and return at the end of the day.
When we had free substituted classes, sometimes they would tell us something like “Sorry, I’d allow you phones now, but if I did I could have problems from it.” So clearly they would punish teachers for that. That’s just crazy.
And computers aren’t in every class. Even if they are, they might not always work. Now we use our phones even to do exams sometimes. But, yeah, school isn’t even mandatory for me anymore, so it’s already different.Finally, I don’t trust kids to make life changing decisions. See all the high schoolers who got suckered into a worthless degree from the University of Phoenix. It’s very fair to take the reigns from people who can’t control themselves and their impulses.
I wasn’t even talking about such late decisions. For example, when I was 10 I was given the decision between going into class A or class B since I had good enough results for A. A was class for a little more talented kids. They even had some additional subjects. Well, my dad discouraged me from going to class A. He told me “There won’t be any normal kids. I’d choose B if I were you.” So I did. I regret. I could have gotten to a better school later on.
Some explanation of those classes:
A - Talented
C and D - sport classes (basketball and hockey respectively)
B - everything elseNext, when I was 14, I told my psychologist about my living conditions. Including photos of how our home looks like. She told me that she could call social services. Then asked me if I agreed. I was scared, so I said no. I regret, once again.
And something that’s there always, choosing high school when you’re 15.
I am not sure how it works across different school systems. In Slovakia, they are focused just on 1 particular field of study determining where you’ll be for the rest of your life. 3 year fields are without graduation (e.g.: various mechanics and plumbers). 4 year and 5 year fields are with graduation, meaning you can go to college/university.
I’ve had a few classmates who only chose particular field because their friends were going there too, even though they weren’t interested in it.------------------------------
Oof, sorry. I got too much off topic.
Well, by their teenage years, why not all the reasons adults need smartphones fully accessible? Looking up information from authoritative sources? Emergency contact? Coordinating schedules for office hours?
Schools often simultaneously demand more from children than workplaces do adults, and give them less opportunity to excel.
I’m not saying work-inappropriate phone use should be accepted, but taking them away entirely is downright irresponsible. Just like schools who still demand students write on a notebook instead of using a laptop. Raise your hand if you had RSI-related issues for a decade or more after high school? We old people tend to forget how bad school used to be (and can be) for physical and mental health AND for learning.
“oh no i cannot play on my phone, how could school be so cruel”
What would you prefer the school do?
How could they motivate you to actually pay attention in class instead of playing with your phone? Honestly ask yourself if this “addressing motivation” would make geometry more interesting than tiktok.
Well said. Social media is designed specifically to hold attention and encourage addictive behavior. There’s no way to compete.
Maybe if they used blender(the software) to explain it.
If they try to use a blender (the kitchen appliance), I’m sure it will also become interesting.
The blending will continue until morale improves
Blended Learning tho … 😁
“Today in class we will be finding out whether or not triangles will blend. Please put on these safety goggles before sitting at your desks.”
- balderdash ( @balderdash9@lemmy.zip ) 49•10 months ago
I can try to make the material interesting and be engaging but if you’re watching Overwatch on your phone all of that is a moot point.
but if you’re watching Overwatch
You can just take away their phone in that case, no?
Not sure about OP, but my point is that phones can be useful. But if they’re clearly not…
OP take a look back at this in about 5-10 years and realize how monumentally ignorant it is.
I don’t think OP is thinking that far into their future. I don’t think OP has any plans for higher education either. It’s been a few decades for me, but when I was an undergrad, if your pager went off in class --cell phones weren’t really a thing yet-- most professors would ask you to leave, which was not a good thing in the small upper division classes as they were very difficult and you had to pass with a B or better to move on in my major.
Wrong. Get off the phone.
The amount of times I told my students they can use their phone for certain exercises, then 90% of them just went on Tiktok or played Clash Of Clans, is why is started not allowing phones.
I get that to the 10% it was super helpful but it’s just easier to not allow everyone.
Well, at least you gave them a chance. Thank you.
I’m all for giving them a chance to prove they’re able to be responsible. Especially the kids that always try hard and deserve to be trusted.
I found that a lot of kids struggled to accept any consequences of their actions, though taking their phones off them for playing games was pretty clear to them.
It would be funny if people were forced to do something akin to mandatory military service but for working at a school as a paraprofessional or other aide for a little while. I feel like most people really have no idea how much teachers have to juggle and deal with on a daily basis. Come see how my kids behave when left to their own devices and then judge me.
Everyone should have to work a retail/customer service/care/teaching job, its eye opening the way people treat those they see as in their service.
For sure! A lot of parents don’t really understand the amount of stuff teachers have to go through either, and we don’t get paid for the hundreds of hours we do outside of teaching hours.
It’s why I had to quit in the end. Felt like I couldn’t give it my all because I was mentally and physically exhausted.
Like flight mode there should be school mode where students can only use a provided wlan that comes with content filters.
100%, if the schools were funded well enough, issuing school phones would be amazing!
School computers work well because they block most of the distractions but ofc students have 1001 distractions in their own!
If schools only focused on what students were motivated to learn, I’m not sure schools would really be accomplishing much. Not to say that schools shouldn’t foster motivation in students. Just that technology, especially social media, is very effective at distracting people.
You can increase motivation to learn by making lessons more engaging even if it’s a subject they’re not personally interested in. But making lessons more interesting and engaging is not easy and we can’t expect all teachers to have the skills and resources to do the research and development needed to produce lesson plans that are really interesting. I think it could be improved by putting more money into developing interesting lesson plans centrally and distributing the materials to teachers to follow instead of just producing dry curriculums. Teachers need support.
I have literally built a dungeons and dragons campaign to learn statistics, and had some students on their phones. I’m not a dancing bear, and having a dopamine panic-button makes it near impossible to engage with anything challenging (I struggle with it too and know it’s an anxiety crutch, but it’s super maladaptive).
I fully support kicking kids off their phones in class, I don’t think any lesson no matter how engaging can compete with that. I’m not supposed to be on my phone during meetings, I think it’s perfectly reasonable to ban phones from class. I was just commenting that work can be done to make lessons more engaging when phones aren’t involved. There’s of course a limit to what you can do, and some subjects are just inherently harder to get kids into, like statistics. But seriously good on you for doing that. I’m sure that while it didn’t have perfect engagement, it was far better than just teaching it to the book.
Just curious, is there a place you can share that lesson plan to other teachers? It’d be a shame for all that work you did to not get to be used in other classrooms as well.
But also, screen addiction is very real
Agreed. I’m not defending phones in class, just pointing out that there’s more work that can be done with lesson plans as well.
That aren’t motivated and are bored as hell; the average motivation level for schools where I live is a 2.9… out of 10. If kids aren’t motivated and they have devices on them, what do you think they would do in class?
That’s just how school has always been. Students don’t care because they take education for granted. It was the same 30 years ago, it is the same now. You’re not supposed to have fun. You’re supposed to learn so you can get a job that you enjoy.
Banning phones in class is the bare minimum. It was not that long ago that they smacked your hands with sticks when you didn’t listen.
You’re not supposed to have fun. You’re supposed to learn so you can get a job that you enjoy.
Hi, elder leftist here. The whole education system is already set up to produce obedient workers. If you don’t believe me, ask yourself how much time is spent teaching kids to organise effectively, or advocate for issues they care about. Or even just build good communication with their classmates, like how to react to bullying.
All that matters is to follow the authority, don’t question the rules, put the things in your head that they give you and nothing else.
The reason kids are bored in school is because the current system doesn’t address the real problems they have, so why should they care about the system.
Their “real” problems are at most only real in that moment, and rarely end up mattering later, but even so, the responsibility falls on the students and their parents, not the school. School is here for you to learn the basics so that you can function as an adult. Your field of interest and its focus comes after that. More often than not, whether the student can pursue their interests depends on if the core education was sufficient or not.
But also, learning how to organize, identifying and addressing bullying, communication and encouraging study of personal interest were top priorities in all schools I went to from elementary throughout highschool, but then again, I grew up in Sweden and cannot speak for other countries. Nevertheless, students (me included) always complained about school.
What about during breaks? They’re doing that as well.
Take it from an old man, as you grow up friends drift apart. People change, you meet new people. You’ll always cherish those friendships you had back then, but you will never all be together in one place like you are now. People will have jobs, families, girlfriends, spouses, commitments. I love my best friend to death, we’ve been friends since jr high, but I see him once a year now.
Take advantage of the time you have with them. Go to the gas station and get a soda that’s too big, walk around town aimlessly, do boring kid stuff. You’ll have all the time in the world to be online here later, late nights writing comments at 10pm, thinking fondly about doing stupid teenager stuff with your friends 20 years ago
Yup, I haven’t seen one of my friends in person in years because he’s in the army. Another one lives right here in town but has a whole family to take care of, but every single time he’s asked me to do anything with him has been a bad time, and I kinda feel bad about it. The rest of my friends have mostly either moved elsewhere or I’ve just not kept in touch.
So yeah, even people that I kept in touch with for some time after I got out of school have basically not been in my life for some time now. I’ve got a few friends that I usually hang with online, but all my school mates have basically gone their separate ways.
They would probably be more likely to stare at their phones instead of learning if they did.
I do think that having students sit at desks for hours at a time is not an effective way of teaching. Giving students different ways of learning is beneficial and more likely to motivate them. But that usually is more work and more expensive to do.
In an ideal world, every student would have an individualized, self paced learning program with a dedicated teacher. Unfortunately, that’s not the case for nearly any student.
I would be interested to see how a self paced learning program with a dedicated teacher would end up if it was focused on embracing getting sidetracked. I know I’ve sat through history classes in the past and had semi-unrelated questions I wanted to research or ask about but didn’t want to waste people’s time. In situations like that I would prefer to have a computer to get a quick answer versus pondering it in the back of my head.
There must be some truth to an idea that you don’t learn as much from an answer from a question you didn’t ask.
Man, I remember a couple teachers that encouraged randomly asking questions like that, and the whole class was really engaged. It was very rare but an amazing environment to learn in. I feel bad that there’s so many people that never got to have those sort of teachers.
It’s like the educational equivalent of a gateway drug. Some of the electives I took like programming really encouraged it and that’s what kept me interested even afterwards with subpar instructors.
I think at a certain point, you should be able to drop math as a subject and take programming instead. There’s no shortage of math concepts in programming that still require understanding of underlying concepts, but I can easily say if I had that option in school, I’d have learned way more in a programming class than I ever did in math.
I mean programming is a way to get someone engaged and to some degree there can be creativity. It would almost be like a more topical and realistic version of a word problem
I had a history teacher in school that liked me even though I barely paid attention in class. I was bored in the class itself, but loved history and would spend the entire period just reading the textbook because I found it interesting. So even though I didn’t pay attention I would still ace assignments like nobody else in there.
I was usually a couple chapters past the class at any given time.
School will never be as interesting as a phone. Your teacher will never be as entertaining as an influencer. Your textbooks will never be as entertaining as your feed. What families and teenagers have to understand is that education is a choice. If you want to learn, you’ll probably have to put your phone down for long periods of time to actively listen and learn. It’s difficult. It tires you out. It’ll frustrate you. But you will eventually learn.
Then again - when I look at home prices and inflation, I understand young people’s feelings of futility.
Good luck young people. I’m really rooting for you to figure this out.
As a former young person that came from poverty and is finally buying a house in a high cost of living area, go read “so good they can’t ignore you” it might help with the figuring out!
Your teacher will never be as entertaining as an influencer.
Those influencers are entertaining?
When I look at home prices I know that school never has been good. People don’t understand what they have to do to drive down prices.
Why can’t Tiktok be used to find the best courses? There is no need for teachers to teach when Tiktok can do it better. Let teachers become mentors.
I don’t think it’s just a feeling of futility - it’s true phones can be distracting and offer more potential entertainment, and it’s true learning can sometimes be a slog. At the same time, learning can be fun and engaging, and phones can offer access to a wealth of information (of highly varying quality, admittedly).
Concentrating too hard on mere academic success as gauged by metrics like school grades is undoubtedly discouraging for a student who only goes to school if they are told they must.
I agree that the school environment should be more motivating, but there’s no way to compete with apps and games designed to be addictive, even adults have trouble avoiding their phones at work.
The motivation problem isn’t the school’s fault, it’s yours. You choose to not want to learn.
Oh yeah I totally needed to learn about what a writer might have thought 200 years ago while writing EVERY SINGLE PAGE of his book, when I already knew that I wanted to do something with technology.
But we didnt have enough teachers for biology and physics and chemistry, so instead we got more literature.
I wonder where I (and our whole society) would be now if schools werent meant for preparing kids to transition into work, but instead about getting the full potential out of every kid.
Im German and I did learn English in school, but not really, because it was taught in a way that made me lose interest immediately.
I actually learned English when I started to watch Minecraft Youtubers in English because they had some interesting contraptions in their videos or something like that (Its been a while, I dont know exactly why I started watching them)
If you think studying literature is to teach you literature, you’re sorely mistaken. Similar to if you think you study mathematics to learn mathematics.
You are taught literature so you can better communicate with other people. What is the author’s intention with this passage? What are they trying to say? What might their motivations be? Now apply this to a letter from a potential business partner or a politician’s tweet and you might begin to see how what you were taught becomes relevant.
Why are you taught grammar? Who cares whether you use the Oxford comma or not? Who has the need to know what mood, theme, and figurative language are? Apply this in the context of trying to write a professional email to your boss or trying to tell a story to engage other people, and maybe you’ll start to see that it wasn’t worthless.
Why do we need to know the way to prove that the angles of a triangle add up to 180? Who needs to know the Quadratic formula and how to apply it? It’s so you know how to think rationally and apply logic rigourously, so you don’t fall into familiar logical traps that we see on the evening news and the Internet every day.
Why do you need to know how cells reproduce? Why do we need to know how the pH scale works? It’s so when people on Facebook claim that vaccines erase your DNA or that alkaline water prevents cancer, you’ll know better.
Not taking enough literature and humanities is how we end up with Elon. Every little wannabe engineer who thinks they shouldn’t have to take a humanities course should be smacked in the face by a physics demonstration.
Why does anyone buy this bullshit?
This is just a weird comparison
Neither one really has anything to do with the other.
In fact, I’d say getting rid of phones could help improve motivation because when students are more focused on school, they’re more motivated and perform better.
This meme was made by a middle schooler who doesn’t understand the higher-level decisions being made by educators.
Multiple studies have shown that smartphone decrease concentration, and have negative impact on emotional well being in adolescents.
The mere presence of a smartphone reduces basal attentional performance https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-36256-4
Brain Drain: The Mere Presence of One’s Own Smartphone Reduces Available Cognitive Capacity https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/691462
Attention or Distraction? The Impact of Mobile Phone on Users’ Psychological Well-Being https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8093572/
Mobile phone use, behavioural problems and concentration capacity in adolescents: A prospective study https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1438463916300645
Not only kids struggle with this, adults too. I’ve seen restaurant visits where everyone puts their phone on a pile on the table, first one to ring pays the bill. Otherwise Billy couldn’t stop texting his controlling partner all night.
There is more research to be done, but so far this might be a good thing: https://www.verywellmind.com/how-do-smartphones-affect-the-brain-2794892
first one to ring pays the bill
Always eating for free 😁
Always eating for free 🥲Everybody knows how to mute their phone or turn it off, and the other end can get used to them being busy and unavailable sometimes.
I was rather referring to having nobody who would text/call me, besides my carrier, of course. But also that means I won’t end up in restaurant with someone.
Second slide makes the first one possible but will still take effort beyond that
I don’t think so tbh. If students are motivated enough, then this policy wouldn’t need to be pursued.
A lot of kids are really addicted to their phones it’s hard to even talk to them when they just always have their phone in their hand
Not just kids
looks up from phone
Huh? What’s you say?
To be honest, sometimes I may just stare at black screen if I have low battery just to avoid talking with people. It serves the same purpose as headphones, just a bit worse.