CHOICE: CELL PHONES IN THE CLASSROOM

When I went to my field placement one day, the students were doing a project on how to take care of pets. The teacher went around to the students and took pictures of the students working together and of their projects on her camara phone. Later the teacher posted the pictures of the class on her website. I think this is a really cute idea because the students can have access to those pictures and also the parents can have access to them also. This is an example of the cell phone being a teacher tool, but I think the use of digital pictures on a cell phone is also a student tool. I think this because students can also document pictures, especially if students go on a field trip and wants to take pictures they can take them from their phone and then share the pictures with the rest of their class later.

Some other ways that cell phones can be beneficial to the classroom are that the students can use them as calculators. If you think about most student will have a cell phone, so it would be a lot easier to use what you have instead of having to go and buy a calculator. Students can also use cell phones as dictionaries. I know it is important for a child to get used to a dictionary, but once they know how to use them they should be able to look up words on the Internet. Today, students love technology and love learning with technology, so maybe if they know they can look up a word on their cell phone they will look up more words. If students need to look up something on the Internet they can do that on their cell phone also. If they are reading a book about a topic they need background information about then this can be very useful.

Some disadvantages to using cell phones in the classroom are that it can be a distraction. The teacher would need to have strict rules on when the cell phones can be used for pictures, dictionaries, internet access, and calculators because if the students can use the cell phones whenever they want, then there will be the distractions of the internet, texting, and making phone calls. It is the teachers job to be clear on when the cell phones can be used.