- Having Cell Phones in your school is great if your students have access to unlimited data plans, or you find a way for schools to pay for messages that are sent. Passing unknown and additional costs onto parents is not acceptable as part of using cell/mobile phones in your school. The perfect phone is one with a camera, voice recorder, MP3 player and BlueTooth connectivity. WLAN access is also great, so you can access the school's wireless internet network. Some second hand phones may just need a new battery, but they are cheap and easy to buy - I haven't listed all available batteries, so just ask for a quote for any spares you need.
|
|
- The issue of equity also comes into play – if you are offering students an improved learning activity, you must ensure that all students have the opportunity to have access to the new activity or something of equal educational value. Setting up activities where students share phones is one idea, or you could also ask for donations from the community for phones, discreetly through a locked box at a local shopping centre or supermarket. A lot of people get a new phone with each 24 month contract, so there are a lot of perfectly good multimedia devices out there for the asking. You can then clean the phones up, remove any data, and add them to your school's resources, so students without their own phone can use one in school and have maximum access to technology. Don't worry if a donated phone doesn't come with a charger or adaptors. You can buy a new one for a few dollars.
|
|
- However if you ban cell phone use in your school, you are passing up on the opportunity to use a massive amount of equipment that you don’t have to buy or maintain. If 90% of students in your school have access their own cell phones, your school can benefit from hundreds and hundreds of digital cameras, ebook readers, voice recorders, MP3 / audio players, video recorders and players, digital memory cards, possible note taking programs for phones will full keyboards... and that’s not even getting into the capability for student cell phones to become mini computers and run 'Flash' or 'Shockwave' software for learning foreign languages, mathematic games, dictionaries, full copies of Wikipedia etc. Newer cell phones can also use wireless internet points to access the web, making them even more valuable as an individual learning tool. Every student can have their own internet connection, and many sites are making specific versions of their content for viewing on phones.And if you have a lot of phones in your class, you might need a way to organise them. Cell phone socks and pouches are particularly useful, keep the dust and dirt out, and stop phones from slipping out of pockets or getting lost (the bright colours make sure they'll always be seen).
|
|
- Some phones take SD and MicroSD memory cards, making it much easier to organise, swap, share and collaborate on digital files.
|
|
- And let’s be honest, if you embrace cell phones in your school, every student can instantly have a 1:1 computer student ratio. Students can also personalise their phones in a way they could never personalise a school laptop or EeePC. And although phones are all different, they can all access standard file formats, so it doesn’t matter what type of phones they use or what menu systems they might have.
|
|
- If you supply cell phones or allow them to be used in a school while students are under your duty of care, you’ll be responsible for everything else they do on their phones during school hours.
|
|
- Now here’s the innovative part. Normally phones will not turn on unless you have an active account with a telecommunications carrier. But, I’ve found some carrier bypass cards that let the phones turn on and run all of their features, without needing to be connected to any network, therefore having 0% possibility of students making expensive calls, or receiving calls from strangers during the school day. No cyber-bullying (because the owner of the phone has to allow it to be seen and has to allow each message to be received), no expensive calls and no contact from people outside of the school that you can't control!
- AND with Bluetooth capabilities, the school and teachers can communicate with students easily, send messages, photos, files and any other type of media. Teachers can set up Bluetooth partnerships with every student in their class, and at the end of the day simply send homework to everyone’s cell phone via Bluetooth. For someone who knows what they are doing, this would take about 30 minutes to set up. Bluetooth connects directly to the computer within the phone's own identify, not the 'call number' on the phone assigned by a telecommunications company. Students basically just put their own name on their own phone, so a teacher can selectively send content to an individual or a group. Basic Windows software can let a teacher send a file to the whole class group at once.
|
|
- If your classroom desktop workstations don't have BlueTooth (most don't) you can buy a fully functional, driver-less Bluetooth Adaptor for $5 in the Shop. Bluetooth is also great for students to send photographs from their phone to the school network, homework brought to school on the phone and transferred to the teacher’s laptop, or maybe browsing and selecting the correct podcast and downloading it onto their phone. Bluetooth connectivity will reduce the number of viruses and spyware programs coming into your network, as you are not connecting an entire memory device to the network. Bluetooth data transfers are very secure and are very specific about what files are to be transferred and accepted.
|
|
- You can also buy BlueTooth audio devices, or the cheaper option of integrated microphone/earpieces for cell phones.Doesn’t that sound great? Your school will never have to buy another general camera, media player or digital storage drive. And I suspect parents will be happy with this type of approach, especially if the school supplies the dummy SIM cards. Their children will get to use that expensive phone a lot more, and the school will be modelling how to use the phones at zero cost, so when students go home and swap with over to their real phone, they will be familiar with the free tools and functions, which may just cut down on the expensive services students subscribe to.
|
| |
|
- If you have a cell phone problem in your school, there's a range of signal blockers that are especially designed for environments like schools. Exams, musical performances or special guest visits would all be good candidates for a cell phone blocker.
Product Links:
|
|
