Cell Phone Use in the Classroom: A Personal Experience

May 19th, 2016.

In this section of my blog I would like to offer my personal insight regarding digital citizenship integration in the classroom. Students are surrounded by electronic devices and sometimes we assume that this is a good thing. Since I have been working with technology integration in classroom settings, my ideas about using technology in the classroom constantly change.  In my desire to bring a whole new world of perspectives into my classroom I became too excited about using electronic devices in the classroom therefore I allowed cell phone use during instructional hours......

One school year has passed and I realize I jumped too soon into the classroom technology integration hype. I found out that a high percentage of students used cellphones for personal reasons either to text, communicate on social media. play games, or watch videos. Even after the many reminders about the proper use of cellphones in the classroom, it was too tempting for students to be doing their personal life while trying to learn. This is what I learned through my experience:

1) Focus cell phone integration: Allowing students to keep a phone within reach at any time only distracts students from allowing their brains to fully focus on the task at hand. My goal for next school year is to allow cell phone use only for specific interactive activities at designated periods of time during the lesson. Other than that, cell phones needs to stay "out of sight and out of mind".

2) Consistency: Enforcing appropriate electronic behavior only comes through clearly defined expectations and commitment to enforcing such expectations. Resist the temptation to be the good guy/bad guy by sticking to the policies for cell phone use while in class and have clearly set consequences for not following expectations.