Unit 7 - Classroom Management of Technology

Photo from Pixabay via Free-Photos



A long time ago, in a land you can probably barely imagine, there were classrooms without cell phones. 

Yes, it’s true. When I was a brand new teacher, nobody had a  cell phone.

 I do remember the odd person in public had a pager, which alerted them to go to a landline and call someone.  Even those were not that common. 

Although there is a lot more technology in classrooms now, the biggest change is pretty much every student has a cellphone. That has impacted my classroom management more than anything other single thing. It’s the thing I find myself intervening on the most. 

Not every school has a strict no phone use policy. Some have a bring your own technology policy, and that includes phones fro most students. 

I struggle a bit with how to be reasonable with cell phones in the classroom. In my last school, phones were not prohibited in the classroom.  Students used their phones as calculators, research tools,  to access the class website, sources of music as they worked, and in the case of my ELL, translators if needed.  However, students also used their cell phones to text, get phone calls from their parents, and as entertainment when they should have been on task.

(Yes, you read that correctly. Sometimes parents called or texted during class time.  They expected their children to be able to answer the phone! This was a bit of an eye opener for me.)

It’s the uses that distracts from instruction and participation in learning that are the problem of course.  Since I have been doing terms and substitute teaching, I don’t have the opportunity to build a collaborative agreement or plan with students about cellphone use.  But this is something  I’d definitely do if I was given the opportunity., and I have been thinking about it.

I have noticed I need to give explicit directions on what to do with cell phones during activities. A typical set of instructions would include “All cell phones away. Today’s activity is...” I’ve thought of making a laminated “no cell phone picture” to put up on the whiteboard when instruction or activities without cell phone are required. 

I think smart phones can be a really useful tool for ELL classrooms. Just to have a picture dictionary (like the one in my Electronic Resources page) would be helpful. I think you could do a lot of activities that would be enhanced. Unless the school has an explicit no cell phones policy, I expect to integrate their use. The agreement would have to be, at minimum, no cell phones used for personal entertainment during class. 

My plan is not yet fully developed in terms of how to deal with those who don’t cooperate. I always would start with a request “We agreed cell phones would not be used for entertainment. Please put your phone away.” Past that, I’m not sure yet where I would want to go with adult learners in particular. It’s something I would want to discuss with the administration as well, as Its a good idea to have  their support. I’m open to ideas on this.