Anybody out there have the classroom rule: No cell phones allowed? Or maybe your school set up that rule? My school has that rule too, and so does my classroom...
Kind of.
See, I've been rethinking that rule lately. I understand why the rule exists. Kids will be kids. They will text, Instagram, askFM, Snapchat, Doodle Jump, and anything else during my precious teaching time. So no phones. At. All.
Except when we do that, haven't we taken away perhaps the most valuable tool in the history of mankind? I mean, what would previous generations have given to carry such a powerful tool around in their pockets?! Einstein? Newton? Caesar? All that research? All that information? Right there at their fingertips. Wouldn't they be blown away that we have such powerful tools but usually use them to look up cat videos and play Candy Crush?
So a kid is reading her book and gets to a word she doesn't know. Most students skip those words because it takes too long to walk to the dictionary and look it up. Well, why not let her use her phone and the dictionary.com app?
Another student is done early with his class work. He wants to keep working but the only work he has left requires him to go online. Why not let him use his Edmodo app to access his PDFs and PowerPoints and blogs from his teachers?
A student is done handwriting her first draft of an essay, while the other students are still writing. It seems a little silly for her not to be able to start typing her essay out in the notepad on her phone so she can email it to herself later. Or typing it in Google Docs for easy access on her computer that evening at home.
How about those students in creative writing class who need to do in-the -moment research for all kinds of random stuff in their story or movie screenplay or novel chapter?
I know it's hard to trust them. They work so hard to lose our trust. They might starts using Wolfram Alpha you solve their math problems. They might just steal vocabulary sentences from other websites instead of creating them themselves.
But I, for one, have always thought it's a little backwards for us to make our rules the cheaters instead of empowering the winners. What if we just call all of them to a high standard, give them the tools, then figure the rest out.
That's where I'm headed.
