In this video I'm going to argue why we should be allowing students to use their cell phones
in schools. I know that this is a controversial topic and as a former middle school teacher,
I'm well aware of all the challenges that come up when you allow students to use their phones.
The reality is that those challenges come up even when we don't let students use those phones,
but I do think the benefits far outweigh the negatives and I'm going to make five arguments
why in this video. My name is Sam Kary and this is my YouTube channel for The New EdTech Classroom.
First of all I do want to clarify that when I say cell phone, I'm referring to an Android or
iOS device because those have the most direct applications in an educational environment.
So the first point that I want to make is that we should allow students to use cell phones
as a matter of accessibility. The fact of the matter is that although I believe every student
should have a one-to-one device, that's simply just not the case, and in addition to hardware,
lots of students also don't have access to reliable wi-fi. While smartphones won't solve
all of those problems, if the issue is lack of access to a device or to fast internet,
we should be leaning on all the resources that we have available to us right now, and the reality is
that lots of students that might not have a laptop do in fact have a smartphone and some families
that don't have access to wi-fi might still have access to data plans. If you teach remotely
and your students don't have reliable access to a device or to wi-fi, then it makes sense to get them
on a smartphone because some of the most popular apps that teachers are using for remote teaching
are also available in iOS and Android version. So for example, programs like Zoom, Google Meet, Google
Classroom, Google Slides, even Google Docs all have app versions. So until every student in the public
school system has access to a one-to-one device and every family has access to universal, free
broadband internet, we should be leaning on smartphones as a way to fill in the gap
and to make technology-integrated learning more accessible to everyone. The second reason that we
should not only just allow cell phones, but even encourage their use, is because they can help us
make lessons more interactive. Although this is particularly applicable to online learning,
it also applies to in-person learning as well. If we're doing synchronous remote teaching,
it can be a real challenge to get students to both participate in a video conference meeting,
as well as participate in being involved with whatever work it is that we want them to do.
Teachers have been getting around this complication by getting themselves a second screen
and the reality is that a smartphone can basically function in the same exact way. So whereas we can
teach students how to do things like split their screen so that they're able to see the video
conference meeting on one side and then access the materials that they need to work on on the other,
we can also just have them watch the video conference on their laptop and then log
into an interactivity app on their phone so that they're able to participate in whatever
it is that we're doing in a more interactive way. Similar to the other point I made, most of the most
popular interactivity programs also have an app version. So for example, there's an app for Nearpod,
for Edpuzzle, for Google Jamboard, for Padlet, and even programs that don't have a specific app, like
Pear Deck, can still be accessed via the mobile web version. The third reason we should allow students
to use their cell phones in schools is because a cell phone has what the majority of laptops do not,
and that's a world-facing camera. World-facing cameras allow students to do things with their
devices that they can't do with a laptop nearly as easily, like video projects and photo projects.
And this might be counter-intuitive but there are ways that you can use that world-facing camera
to actually limit students' screen time, if that's a concern of yours. So whereas I think we can
sometimes fall into the trap of thinking that if we're doing online learning or if we have a
fully tech-integrated curriculum, that means we do absolutely everything with technology,
that just doesn't have to be true. You can still have students do poster projects,
hands-on science experiments, do actual physical notebook entries, and things like that, and then
what they can do is take a picture of what they did or a video of it and then they can upload
it into programs like Seesaw, which will allow them to annotate directly on top of their work,
or they could also upload videos and photos into a program like Adobe Spark Post
and make something even more creative out of it. There are so many possibilities for different
awesome creativity projects that students can do when they have access to a world-facing camera.
The fourth point is that a smartphone is one of the very best ways to bring advanced technology
into your classroom, specifically augmented reality and virtual reality. Right now there's a plethora
of really awesome educational augmented reality and virtual reality platforms.
Merge Edu and Google Expeditions are a good place to start to look for programs that can
make learning experiences more tangible and to help students that maybe have difficulty
accessing the schema for understanding a new concept really bring that concept to life. So
with augmented reality programs, students can do things like hold the solar system in their hand.
They can also examine different parts of the human body, as a way to see those objects in 3D and get a
better sense of what it is that they're learning. Similarly, virtual reality is a really easy way
to give students immersive learning experiences without having to leave your classroom or their
homes. You can get class sets of really affordable virtual reality headsets like Google Cardboard
that simply require a student to snap their smartphone into the headset to be able to use,
and then you and your students can do things like virtual museum visits, they can visit different
places around the world that you might be studying, like China here. Students can also do things like
explore the inside of a cell and even see science experiments happening in front of them.
At this point there's a virtual reality app for pretty much any educational experience
you can imagine. My fifth and last reason is that smartphones are a part of daily life and I believe
that educational institutions should reflect the world in which we live and prepare students for it.
So since smartphones are part of life, they should also be part of education and the point that I'm
trying to make here isn't simply that since it exists we should bring it into schools. The point
that I'm trying to make is that regardless of whether or not we specifically allow students
to use smartphones in our classrooms or in our schools, the reality is that they're going to use
them outside of our classroom and they're going to use them in their lives in the future as well,
so we might as well teach students about best practices for how to use them respectfully.
We can teach them digital citizenship pertaining to smartphone use and teach them how to use it as
a tool that can support them, as opposed to something that can tear people down,
especially pertaining to social media issues. Smartphones aren't going away
and a huge number of students are walking around with a super computer in their pocket,
so we should figure out how to leverage that to our advantage in education. If you have thoughts,
ideas, or concerns about bringing smartphones into schools, I'd love to hear about those in
the comments below. Thank you so much for watching my video to the end. If you found the tips that I
shared helpful, please share it with other teachers that you know, hit the like button, and subscribe to
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can also check out some of the other tutorials I have on my channel by clicking on one of
those two videos above and if you're interested in downloading any of the resources that I've created
and show on my videos, please visit my website at www.newedtechclassroom.com.
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