Mobile mania: why ban the mobile phone?

Autumn 2007

Far from confiscating the mobile phone from the classroom, should we embrace it as an educational tool? Connected takes a sounding.

The mobile phone. One of the most universal examples of ICT – so ubiquitous that most of us take it for granted as an essential of modern-day life. There are those who argue that such an integral example of ICT should be embraced by today’s schools – particularly given that the mobile phone is likely to drive many innovations in Bluetooth and web technology in years to come. ‘Don’t ban the kids from using phones,’ the argument goes. ‘Encourage them to.’ Then again, that may be an argument that works well at an educational conference. But if you’re a hard-pressed teacher attempting to control a class of 30 boisterous children, the mobile phone may not seem like such a wonderful innovation when that ringtone goes off again.

Yet, whatever side of the fence you may sit, this is not a debate that is likely to go away. Earlier this year, Nokia (albeit with an obvious vested interest) predicteda 15% growth in the global mobile market whilst MobileYouth claimed this would be accompanied by a 29% rise in teenage owners. Mobile mania shows no sign of abating, and it seems that the education system will just have to play catch-up. Marc Prensky, an American writer and game designer in the fi eld of education, highlighted the generation gap between teachers and pupils when he calculated the interchange of information experienced by students who have grown up in the past 25 years. By the time they complete their A-levels, these children have racked up:

• 10,000 hours playing video games
• 200,000 emails and texts sent
  and received
• 10,000 hours of digital mobile phone use
• 20,000 hours of watching TV
• 500,000 TV adverts watched
• just 5,000 hours of book reading

Taken in this context, it is clear that today’s students are capable of processing enormous quantities of information from a variety of sources. They are, as the increasingly familiar phrase goes, ‘digital natives’ whilst their teachers remain ‘digital immigrants’. With this in mind, there is a growing need in education for students and pupils to grow closer in the media and ICT tools they share. If school is to be a truly rewarding experience for today’s students, it must be relevant to them. Challenging the norm “The differences between today’s school generation and those of the past are immense,” agrees Dan Sutch, a Learning Researcher at Futurelab, a charity that encourages innovation in education. “Students today can find the answers to complex questions in a fraction of a second through search engines. This means that they require a different type of education – it’s not about providing information but about supporting their response to the masses of information they receive.

“In this way, technology has the potential to revolutionise the way pupils learn. Education is becoming more personalised – instead of the learner responding to the stimulus, technology has turned the process on its head, so that the material is responsive to the learner. Mobile phones, in particular, could lead to major changes to education as we know it. First and foremost, phones are communication tools that allow kids to create new networks to support their learning activities. They change the reason for kids being in the classroom – the teacher is not there to feed students information, but to guide and encourage them through the learning process. The issue at hand is not whether mobile phones can be used in an educational context – we know they can. It’s about whether mobiles should integrate into current education systems or challenge the norm.”

As far as integrating into the classroom is concerned, there is certainly a vast range of exciting applications for mobile phone technology. As Dan points out, with 3G phones “every student is a reporter”. 3G offers a multitude of methods through which to capture images, sounds and text, to manipulate that information into a variety of formats, and then to share it. For example, voices can be recorded and the fi les heard through a mobile phone or transferred to a computer via Bluetooth. Once on the computer, they can be edited into a podcast or can make up part of a radio show. This use of technology is particularly useful for the study of modern languages, with pupils given the chance to record their own speaking exercises and compare the results. Across all curricula, students can conduct interviews with experts, record study notes, and access the recording as and when they need it. And as mobile phone cameras grow evermore sophisticated, the potential to create digital stories and even simple films such as interviews, experiments and virtual tours, gets even greater.

Put into practice

As well as offering a vast range of benefits in the classroom, many schools have found mobile phones useful in organising the daily administrative tasks that can prove very time-consuming. Jim Cassidy, Head Teacher at Gracemount High School in Edinburgh, introduced Groupcall text messaging system to help track attendance, after seeing the system in use at the Scottish Learning Festival 2003. Groupcall reads attendance information live and in real time, and generates text messages to the parents of absent pupils. Since the system was introduced, overall attendance has improved, thanks to the system sending a clear message that absence is a matter of concern. Gracemount has now extended the service to offer positive messages congratulating students for good attendance and punctuality, reminders of parents’ evenings and homework, and information regarding closures and detentions. The system has been hailed a great success, with a survey revealing that 79% of parents agree with the use of text messages to inform them of a problem.

In another successful initiative, primary schools in Fife have made use of a new, automated messaging service that tracks available supply teachers and notifies them when they are needed. More than 400 teachers passed their contact details on to Fife Council, where they were displayed on the intranet along with availability and location details. Schools then simply select up to 10 people they wish to contact and an automatic text message and/or email is generated. Currently, 146 primary schools take advantage of the service, and secondary and other schools are expected to follow suit in the near future.

Managing the potential

Given these examples, the possibilities for mobile phone technology seem endless. But does it really have the capacity to change the face of education as we know it? And do we want it to? “The first challenge of mobile phones lies in how we manage their potential,” says Dan. “They are personal devices, so we shouldn’t see them as an opportunity to send school material. We don’t want to take over the students’ technology. It’s about intelligent management. Of course, some teachers and some parents are suspicious of change, but it’s not about change for change’s sake. It’s about understanding that what worked 20 years ago may not be as effective today. Of course, the publicity surrounding mobile phone bullying exacerbates the problem.”
What Dan refers to is the media coverage of practices such as ‘happy slapping’ – bullying filmed on mobile phone cameras – and abusive or threatening text messages. Additionally, there are dangers surrounding photos and phone numbers falling into the wrong hands, children accessing unfiltered internet sites through their mobile phones and photos being taken without an individual’s knowledgeor consent.

In June this year, Scotland on Sunday reported on another area of concern. Figures released by the Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) showed that allegations of cheating had increased by a third, with the number of incidents totalling 221. Included in this figure are 119 suspected cases of pupils’ cheating by using their mobile phone to store notes.“Whether or not technology increases bullying and cheating is subject to debate, but it certainly makes it more visible, which is surely no bad thing,” says Dan. “At the end of the day though, these problems are social ones, and should be dealt with in a social context. There are challenges to overcome, but they should not prevent our schools from utilising this valuable technology.

“What ICT can and must do is to make education relevant to our pupils. To achieve this, we need to remove the perception of a fabricated classroom structure and introduce the notion of a community of learners linked through communication. It’s not about introducing technology because students think it’s fun. Lasting motivation is about students feeling a genuine emotional investment in the activities they undertake. This will come about through a learning process that centres around rich, real experience with relevance in the wider world.”