This week we had a guest speaker, Jesse Miller. Our first big conversation we had was about BC banning cell phones in class from bell to bell. Jesse had strong opinions that this should not take place and that students should have their phones in class, and I slightly disagree with this. 

 I don’t think they should be banned per-se but I honestly do think cellphones can be a big problem in classrooms. It is quite common for students to go on their personal devices during class and not focus on the lesson and then they can potentially fall behind. As a future teacher, this frustrates me because if I were to get the backlash of a student falling behind and getting the blame put on me, it would make me feel upset. If a student is falling behind because they are on their phone, that doesn’t seem fair to teachers who work very hard to make sure they come up with engaging lessons and instead students are sitting on their phones not paying attention. I am speaking from personal experience because when I grew up, I saw many of my classmates, including  me, go on their phone during class time, and completely dissociate with the lesson. Things may be different now and students may not be doing this as much, but I still think cell phones are a big problem in some schools. I then saw this article that had a testimony from a grade 9 student who feels like cellphones in classrooms are harming her learning. With this being said, I do think depending on the class there might have to be rules in place where cellphones have to be put away during lesson time, unless they are needed for research at a certain point. 

A couple classmates and I had a conversation about the ban on Monday and we were all in agreement that maybe they shouldn’t be completely banned, but we do believe that cellphones when available during lesson time do cause quite a bit of distraction. Through research on my own about this ban, I looked at the comments section after. The majority of comments were from parents saying, “I need to be in contact with my child at all times” and to me that is just silly. The office has a phone if you must get in contact, unless a student has a medical condition that requires them to carry a communication device. Within this conversation, there was a classmate who is also a parent, and he stated his opinion about cellphones and communication. He stated he doesn’t need his kids to have cellphones in order to communicate. He said they can use the office phone if it really comes down to an emergency, he feels there is no need for cellphones in class. It was very interesting to get multiple perspectives on this topic, especially since we are all teachers in training.

Another conversation that we had in class that stuck with me was the topic of staff posting and sending photos while at school. If they do that  on the school network, that information can be retrieved. This was crazy to me just how much teachers have to think about and be aware of their actions. This class was very informational and freaked me out a bit on just how careful we have to be with technology. It feels like teachers are heavily surveilled, which I understand, and it is a good reminder to all of us future teachers to be aware of how easy it is for anyone to find our digital footprints.

Photo by Ollie Bray on Flickr licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0