Slashdot Mirror
School System Considers Jamming Students' Phones
An anonymous reader writes "The St. Ansgar, Iowa school system is considering buying cell-phone jamming equipment for up to $5000 if it is deemed legal. The use of the equipment would be suspended in the case of an emergency, but one has to wonder if they would be quick enough to shut it down should an emergency arise. 'A Federal Communications Commission notice issued in 2005 says the sale and use of transmitters that jam cellular or personal communications services is unlawful.'"
we didn't have cell phones. beepers were just starting to appear when i graduated high-school. we never had any problems alerting in the event of an emergency. we had fire alarms, PA system, and ye olde fashioned telephones in every classroom.
FOXTROT UNIFORM CHARLIE KILO
Just use the structures themselves and make them like a Wal*Mart or Home Depot. I never get signal in those stores!
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
I'll help them:
It isn't.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
But what happened to good ol' telling them not to use their mobiles, and if they -do- use it, apply punishment?
I obviously didn't RTA, but what a waste of money... (if not the possible consequences)
When you shoot a mime, do you use a silencer?
Better yet, contract out the job and have all non-registered phones blocked during school hours.
Only adults would be allowed to register phones.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
In most places, and correct me if I'm wrong, but no one can impede the function of a cellphone when it is calling emergency services. Hell, a 10-year-old cellphone with no service provider still has to be able to connect to 911 - many cities solicit old phones for use by women in domestic violence shelters as emergency phones for just this reason. If the jamming can be rigged to let 911 calls through, then this might be legal from that standpoint.
Whether the FCC allows such things overall, though, is quite another issue.
Never underestimate the potential of Human stupidity. -Heinlein
In before completely unrealistic, hypothetical scenario involving an off-work doctor who is out on his unicycle, when someone gets their second cellphone stuck in their throat, and would have been saved if it hadn't been for the phone-jamming equipment in operation at a nearby school.
What kind? Blackberry?
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
It'll take a failed emergency call to get the school sued...
It's unfortunate that teachers have ceased to be considered authority figures.
Why should they muck around with jamming when they can just confiscate the phones when they are being used in violation of school policy and then returned at the end of the day, as has been done for countless other disruptive devices (before the wussification of America and the rise of the helicopter parent)?
Are cell phones really that detrimental to classroom activities? I would imagine that if you took cell phones away from the "texters", they would simply find something else to distract them from the lesson. There is the argument that texting makes cheating easier; i'm sure they can figure out a way to stop cheaters without blocking all cell phone access at school.
GFA/M/S d-- s: a--- C++++ UBL++$ P+ L+++ !E- W++ N+ !o K- w--- !O !M !V PS++ PE Y+ PGP+ t+++ 5- X+ R tv@ b++ DI++++ D+ G
Because we all know that kids never violate school rules...
Whatever happened with the classic scenario of the teacher saying: "If you don't put away that fucking cell phone during class, I'll confiscate it and you can get it after school again!" ??
These people obviously fail to see that social problems can't be solved with technology. They can be solved with education. (Ask a school, oh wait..).
And yes, it's illegal too..
For a school-wide or town-wide emergency, of course they'll shut off the jammer.
What if a student's parent (or a teacher's spouse) is being rushed to the hospital? They will need to ramp up the old-fashioned "call the school, let them track down the person" mechanism. Cell phones have made those days obsolete.
-Joe
Lose = not win
First off - yes, this is very illegal which is why you don't see the use of active jamming equipment in the US. If they want to instead build a Faraday cage around the entire campus, this would be the "legal" - though prohibitively expensive - way of getting around the issue.
If in fact they attempt this, and staff or a student have a bona-fide medical emergency and are unable to summon emergency services, this district will then be tasked for paying for a home nurse to wipe the drool off of said victim's face for the rest of their lives.
You would think those who work in education would, you know, educate themselves on the relevant laws and ramifications of actions... nahhh, this is the US public school system we're talking about here.
If the phone is seen or heard anytime during school hours, it's taken away, and the parent can come claim it. Parents will get sick of having to do that pretty quick, and the students will learn what happens if they use them during school. In our school district, each school can make the specific rules regarding cell phones, and this is generally how they handle the issue. The best part is, the policy is free to implement and only affects a small minority of phones (the offenders) in an emergency situation.
How about instead of investing in high tech, non-legal solutions, we go with the old fashioned solution to problems.
If an item is found to be distracting, that item will be confiscated for the rest of the class period (hour/block/day as appropriate) and/or the student using the distracting item will be sent to the office.
Way I figure, this rule should still apply to cell phones just as much as they did to papers being passed back in the day.
If cheating is the issue, then maybe the teacher should proctor in a more active manner (ie walking the aisles).
Removing the ability to use cell phones for anyone near/in the school is dangerous, irrisponsible and illegal.
How about actually -allowing- them and designing the curriculum around them? There are some things you can't fit in a text message, essays, critical thinking, etc. And those are the real skills that will actually matter. Similarly, in the real world, you do have access to the internet and any and all reference materials. The school system seems to be designed for 1950s level technology and advancement. Not 2009 which we live in. Collaboration, research and technology are a real part of the world. Contrary to popular belief in most jobs you don't get locked alone in a completely silent environment without internet, phones, etc. to do your job.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Why is a school researching something that is currently illegal?
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
Of course that can cost millions of dollars for a school building. But I heard of a theater that put one in while it was constructing the building (it's a lot cheaper then).
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
If you can't do it in prisons where phones are illegal to start with, what makes you possibly think that you could do it in a school, no matter how well justified the reasons for it may be?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
OK
A lot of people are saying things about the cost, but it probably wouldn't cost much.
A lot of people mention security, but there are obviously ways of doing this without making the school less secure than it would be with the pupils' phones off.
The question here is, why would they do this?! What do they think is the point of the no-phones rule? If students insist on breaking it, those same students are certainly not going to learn a lot more with more strict regulation. This, to me, is a classic example of people trying to find the best way to enforce a particular rule without really considering what is to be gained by that. The use of mobile phones is an effect of students misbehaving, not a cause.
--
Why hello, anon.
Jamming cell phones is a slippery slope and I think we (as a society) would be just as well off to put a stop to this right here.
There is of course the fact that jamming a cell phone for almost any reason is quite illegal. But let's set that aside.
As has often been mentioned- the idea that the jammer would be shut off in an emergency is absurd. If there's a 'big' emergency nobody will remember to turn it off (assuming anybody knows how to), and for 'little' emergencies (as someone else said, girl getting raped in the locker room) this would create a serious problem. Plus which a jammer, being an RF emitter, doesn't immediately stop jamming when you walk thru the school doors. It will either be overpowered, and reduce or degrade service around the school, or underpowered leading to kids just sitting next to the window so their phones will work.
These problems arise anytime you talk about cell phone jamming, and there is no solution. Cell networks are encrypted, so you can't block only non-emergency calls. And no carrier is going to be the first one to step up and help block their customers, it's just not in anybody's best interest.
This is a societal problem, not a technical one, and it requires a societal fix. If people are yakking on their phone in the movie theater, the solution isn't a jammer, the solution is to get people to not be rude assholes.
As for the school, if they can't get kids to pay attention in class maybe the problem is that their lesson plan is boring and the teacher couldn't care less if the kids are interested or not. Or perhaps their problem is that the faculty doesn't demand student respect, so students ignore the rules.
As a previous poster said- just take away the phone or battery of any kid that is using it in class and give it back to him at the end of the day. If he does it again make his parent come in and get it.
Put simply, this school has a discipline problem and needs better teachers or better administration. It does not have a technical problem, so a technical solution won't help them.
--IronHelix
I think the main problem is really the fact that the school is not designed for the 21st century. Students should be -encouraged- to collaborate because the real world is built on collaboration and research. Memorization ends up being part of it when you research the same thing. Think of programming, even if you use a reference book, eventually you start to memorize it to the point where you hardly need to look in the book. Really, the school system needs reformed, more critical thinking, less multiple choice or single-answer questions, because like it or not that isn't the real world. You aren't locked in a dark room with no internet, no reference materials, no collaboration and being handed a sheet of questions. That isn't how it works. Schools should not be teaching the way they are, teach in a way that allows collaboration because that is how the real world works.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
So do you work for Fox News or do you actually have even one single example of your scenario ever having occurred?
Only if they are retarded enough to think that their voice cannot be heard without it going through a phone first.
With the exception of a phone that has some sort of panic button, I don't think a phone would be much more use than a calculator in that or similar scenarios. Screaming/yelling, kicking/biting, etc would be much more effective, than 15 seconds to dial, wait for someone to answer, then wait for whoever answers to decide if it's a joke or not, and then if they act upon it, how long it takes them to "help", same goes for fires, and pretty much anything else that would happen in the school. If the blocker was large enough to cover the entire property, fields, alleys, etc that would be a different story though.
Oh I can't dial 911 as my phones jammed, let me just ask the nearest teacher to go to the principal to find the technician to switch it off.
Because of course most schools wouldn't have regular phones anywhere in the building. I'm sure that teacher that you found to go ask the principal wouldn't have been able to find a phone to dial from, either.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
For each violation a teacher can decide whether to let it slide or dismiss the student from the classroom. Miss enough classes and you fail the class. In college there is more leniency with letting you step out and take a call, but otherwise professors will still kick you out if you're disruptive or blatantly don't pay attention. Jamming the phones now just means professors have to play daycare more when the students haven't learned how to turn the things off.
I guess I sound somewhat "get off my lawn"-ish (I don't use my cellphone for much and rarely text), but if you aren't paying attention due to your cellphone you aren't benefitting from being in the classroom and you aren't helping anyone who may be distracted by you. And turning off your cellphone (or setting it to vibrate) at appropriate times is a common courtesy students should learn.
My webcomic
not jamming, but traffic shaping
something dramatically different than technologically that simply fills an rf frequency with white noise or pink noise. it could simply monitor all calls for geolocation by triangulation or gps and time code, overlaid with blueprints. geographically and temporally refined: let it be used outside, but not inside, 2 meters away, along a straight line. allow a phone to be used during lunch time in the cafeteria, but then not during study hall an hour later, all the while the library is completely verboten. etc., etc.
you could even trigger it so the moment someone makes a 911 call, anywhere, for any reason, the entire system shuts down and anyone anywhere can call anyone. since 911 calls are logged and tracked, legally, it wouldn't be a privacy intrusion to identify the culprit of a phony 911 caller. likewise, the whole intelligent jamming system could be designed to have no privacy implications whatsoever, just blocking some phone according to location and time, who knows whose phone. it COULD be used to snoop, but not any more than the current cell phone providers already does. and besides, it would have to work in close cooperation with the cell networks, and so these installations would not be anonymous or unmarked or unknown, allowing for some sort of privacy policy to be enforced
the whole point is, any problem like this is actually a business growth industry waiting to happen, and somebody, perhaps one of us reading this comment will start a company that will be earning 100 million a year in 10 years providing exactly this sort of jamming to movie houses, universities, churches, etc. all that is required is the fcc to open the doors, and the current cell networks can easily see the light here in terms of new revenue sources
currently the policy of cell phones is anyone can use it anywhere. there's no reason in the world why cemetaries shouldn't be allowed to shut that off during funerals, or courthouses during trials, or churches during weddings, all triggered to shut down and allow all traffic the moment anyone hits 911. the tech is already there, just the willpower and the accretion around the idea that traffic shaping for cell network's time has come
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Like passing notes -- the original method of texting?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
1: It's illegal
2: What's to stop kiddies from skyping, iming, etc. over wifi?
When I was in high school, rock music and dancing were illegal. We couldn't even dance at prom. That is, until Kevin Bacon moved to our town.
The point is irrelevant though as these things are illegal. United States: illegal to operate, manufacture, import, or offer for sale, including advertising (Communications Act of 1934)[4], with fines of up to $11,000 and imprisonment of up to one year.
I work at a Law School. If my building full of lawyers couldn't figure an angle to make this work, I'm pretty sure it isn't going to work.
It isn't legal, and if it were, it will open up a whole lotta liability for the school.
Scenario: Columbine-like event. Students & instructors try but cannot call for help because attackers first control the prinicpal's / Dean's office where the equipment can be shut off.
Sceanrio2: I'm a (age of majority)-year old (substitute teacher | student | janitor ), and my (Parent |spouse | child | ward) is (sick | giving birth| dying | being attacked | at the hospital | being sent home from school) .. and I'm the number they were able to reach on speed-dial. .. but I can't receive signals.
Possible solutions:
1) make a no-phones rule and enforce it. Make parents sign consent to confiscate phones as condition of attendance.
If a student is disruptive with a phone, confiscate it and make parent come to school to retrieve it. Inconvenience the parents and they'll deal with the kids.
2) Actually teach. In many (not all) cases, the teachers/professors most upset by this are the same 'educators' who can't keep a student's attention for more than 15 seconds.
If you made your class interesting ( presupposing: you care, you know the material, you work at presenting it fresh).. then students would watch you, and not try to find something else to do.
3) Make it worth Verizon's or ATT's investment. For the right price, you know there's got to be a switching solution.
(a) - refuse to route calls unless the parties are registered in advance.. i.e.: Johnny's cell can always rcv calls from 20 numbers his parents register plus appropriate emergncy numbers, but during school hours, and while in the school+corporate "cell" range, he cannot rcv any other calls / send to other numbers at certain times. Optionally leave recess and 'free period" schedules open.
(b) - make it a condition of class attendance that -Privacy is lost- all cell phone records of calls made inside the School's cell are open for School officials to review. If caught using a cell phone for anything non-emergent during any class or exam, penalize, suspend or expel student.
(c) come up with (or activate existing) remote programming modes. While ( in [area of school] and [hours= school time]) force ringer to (vibrate) + disable email / internet browsing + limit text count to 3 - 5 per hour. ( naturally, allow fairly easy remote or local override by parent or LE when necessary and appropriate)
People are using smuggled cell phones for arranging hits and drug deals from prison here in Homicide City, and we can't even get permission to jam the airspace over the prisons. We've resorted to specially trained cell-phone-sniffing dogs in Maryland, and apparently our methods are much requested by prison systems in other states.
What would be wrong with something like, "Keep your cell phones turned off. First offense, a week in jug. Second offense, two weeks in jug. Third offense, you don't get to finish the year..."? Maybe they don't put kids in detention any more.
If the cell phone carriers object as strenuously as they do to cutting off a bunch of felons, they're really going to begin screaming if somebody tries to cut off a bunch of high school students.
"Here's what's happening. You're starting to drive like your Dad..." - Red Green
They aren't treating the disease. If you block a kids cell phone he'll find some other way to communicate with friends.
Try to get them to stop chatting before you try to stop them from chatting. There IS a difference.
What if instead of jamming phones, the school put up their own cell antena. They could work with the other local providers to tweek the handoff rules such that phones in side the school are significantly more likely to stay on the school's tower.
Once you have all of those phones on the school's tower it would be simple to shut down texting and internet access while still allowing access to 911 and emergency numbers listed in the student's records.
Sure, it'll cost more than $5000 to get up and maintain, but it is much more likely to pass muster.
Personally though, I'm all for the confiscate and return rule. It's cheaper AND it reinforces lessons in personal responsibility.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
It seems that a more legal/safer method would be to simply make a rule requiring all cell phones be turned off and use detection equipment to detect when students break that rule. OTOH, I suppose one wouldn't be able to localize the signal much more accurately than a classroom, but that should be enough to inform a teacher to keep a closer eye on their students. Identifying cell phone users in hallways and such would be harder... but I doubt that's as important.
Near all fire alarms? That sets off its own alarm? I don't imagine kids will casually pull that thing just so they can make a call. Then again.. I guess I shouldn't underestimate these kids!
I suppose it would be hard to talk to a 911 operator with that alarm going off, but still... I'm sure their used to hearing alarms.
It's a good thing almost every kid 12 years and older now has a cell phone... I can't believe I survived school without one. Those emergencies that happened every day... people getting raped, terrorists trying to take over the school, Canadians invading.
Calling 911 will not prevent the rape anways.
I'd just ban cell phone use if I were a principal/school admin. Get caught using it during school hours for non-emergencies.. phone gets confiscated til the end of the week and you get a detention. Hell, I wasn't allowed to even chew gum or wear a hat. Now get off my lawn.
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
Someone jam us up the cellphone.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
All they need are the usual restrictions for movie theaters. Tell students that carrying a cell phone is fine, but ringing has to be off while in class, and texting in class is a no-no. That's enough to keep cell phones from interfering with the school's educational mission. Beyond that, as a Government body, the school has no business interfering.
There is one major issue with that kind of sentiment -- kids will always find a way to avoid getting caught. Whether it was smoking in an upstairs bathroom or under the bleachers, having sex in a band closet or in an unused 3rd floor classroom, kids are always going to find a way. I'll tell you this from person experience, my niece had her texting traffic tracked by her father for the length of a month. During a single five week period, she used over three-thousand outgoing text messages, about 80% of which were during school hours or after her curfew. He took care of that by taking her phone from her at night to charge it. But, his wife made him give her the phone during school hours for emergencies. I was blown away that she could text that much in a month, let alone, mostly at school. She told me, she just puts her hand under or in her desk, all she has to do is read in the incoming messages. Everything else, she can do blindly, pushing beyond 100 words per minute, all without a full keyboard. She barely has to think to respond, she does it in class, and asserts that she does in fact pay attention. She gets good grades, too. Although, I am not sure of the standards of a modern American high school. The moral of the story is ... if you can't find a better way to stop them using rules, since they'll always find ways to break them ... why not go with the alternative, and just prevent them from doing it in the first place. Schools responded to smoking on campus by using doors that lock closed upon closing and installed sensitive smoke detectors in bathrooms. Ultimately, you can't employ enough educators to catch every student breaking a rule, and there is no way, in today's world, to enforcement those rules to a point where they would actually prevent recurrence. Parents and Administration are simply too lax and lazy.
Suspend students who use their cell phones during class. And not the weak ass day off from school suspension... i'm talking Saturday suspension picking up trash. Make it clear using their phones during class is forbidden. After losing a Saturday or two, they'll stop.
i'm planning on not allowing any kids i have (poor things) to have a cell phone or neural implant until they can pay for it, or i'd get them a phone that can only send and receive between family members.
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!
So you are saying that back when kids had no mobile phones, there were no school schootings by said kids... What is the next conclusion to be made?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Of course it should be:
School System Considers Jamming Students' i Phones
Better luck next time editors ...
There's one for the patent office, 5m jammer in cars which, when disabled manually or automatically on impact, call 911 via bluetooth. A bluetooth connection being required to allow manual disabling.
And as much as these phones are being used in school, I'm surprised this has not come up a few years ago. A big red Cell Phone Kill Disable button in every classroom should be enough to deal with emergency situations. Should have been done yesterday IMO.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
Used to sub for local high schools which had rules against cell phone usage during class. The students refused to follow the rules...used the phones & were rarely punished for this. Not only that...I was punished for following the rules...since the schools are there for the students & their learning. The administration certainly didn't like my answer when I told them the students were using their phones during a closed book exam. Ended up getting a new job after getting tired of me getting on the wrong end of this battle. Funny thing...when these "little angels" go out to the world of work & their boss tells them no cell phone usage at all...wonder if mommy/daddy will swoop in to let their boss know they are entitled to use their cell phones whenever & however they like. My current job is in a secure area. I even put my hands into the jump suit with the pockets sewed up...I can be fired.
Don't worry about the world coming to an end today. It's already tomorrow in Australia. - Charles M. Schulz
Students should be -encouraged- to collaborate because the real world is built on collaboration and research.
Yes, because I'm sure the problem is that students are just *dying* to collaborate over their cell phones, and those nasty teachers are too backwards to understand it. :rollseyes:
Sorry buddy, this is the kind of thing that's being communicated between students during times when they should be working:
"OMG did u c wat ashleys waring 2day???"
"OMG I no wat a hore!"
"LOL!!!"
Using jammers is a bad idea, is illegal in this country, and can make you lawsuit fodder for unintended consequences. Jammers usually aren't very accurate, so other services can also be jammed. Not just those on nearby frequences, but look through the harmonics as well. And they go far beyond the intended area. Years ago there was a case where someone appeared to be jamming aircraft traffic control radio. It would happen the same time every day. When they found it, it was a vcr that had some leaky rf signals coming out! And this was not even meant to be a jammer. Everything today runs over radio communications. Cause an airplane to crash, a pacemaker to malfunction, accidentally jam a police radio and let a murderer get away, you will make the lawyers very rich.
Better idea: in the areas that can not have cell phone traffic, rebuild the areas with faraday shields.
WE DON'T GET SIGNAL.
Boot Windows, Linux, and ESX over the network for free.
Already in place in Morris County, NJ. And BTW, there's more to it than merely "not using it or else." Kids subscribe to RSS feeds, have alarms, event-tones and other nonsense that isn't caller-to-caller. Whether legal or not I'm not arguing, whether helpful or not I can't say, but I can see the schools' side of the argument and think thousands of kids are not going to suddenly (remember to) shut off their phones before starting a school day.
They are backing down, it's not legal.
http://gazetteonline.com/2009/07/31/iowa-law-blocks-schools-call-for-jamming-device
This is MORE American stupidity, Tell the kids that their phone must be off in School and give Six-stokes-of-the-cane, on their bare backside, of both sexes to the first caught, in School Assembly.
Cane $10, and it would fix a lot more problems too.
Hmm, methinks the rapist, if they have that sort of strength, might be able to prevent their victim from getting hold of their cell phone and dialing 9-1-1-SEND. Then, of course, there's the matter of identifying the location (GPS doesn't work indoors) and nature of the crime in progress, and waiting for the police to arrive. I sincerely doubt the rapist would allow all of that to happen.
A loud, piercing, and frequently-repeated scream and appropriate use of fingernails, teeth, and any other blunt or pointy part that can be applied would be far more likely to be useful. At that point, the phone is best applied as a blunt (or if you smash it hard enough against a hard surface and make a shiv, pointy) weapon.
I'm not saying that there's aren't cases where a student's ability to make a 911 call would be useful, even critical, but this doesn't appear to be one of them. If the rapist has overwhelming force sufficient to carry out the act, they have more than enough control to prevent something as complex as a telephone call.
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
if it is deemed legal
notice issued in 2005 says the sale and use of transmitters that jam cellular or personal communications services is unlawful
Are lawful and legal different? [facepalm]
Porquoi?
It should be illegal for a teacher to confiscate property from a student. Just because a student is on school property doesn't mean they have no rights regarding search and seizure of personal property. (I'm not sure what the courts have ruled on this, I'm sure they've said something.)
Back in high school, a friend of mine was reading a fantasy novel (Wheel of Time, I think) during class, for whatever reason. (Boredom, probably.) The teacher told him to give her the book, and he'd get it back after class. Instead, he sat on it and said "go ahead and take it."
No teacher who values their job would ever do that - sexual harassment lawsuits could quickly follow. My friend wouldn't have done it, but he knew she wouldn't risk it.
Whether or not my friend was right to disobey the teacher, he was right in one thing - the book was his property, and she had no right to take it from him.
The law requires kids to be in school, but it doesn't require them to pay attention. That has its own consequences.
I agree, but I don't think that means we should give students unlimited access to their cell phones during school. They are kids. They're going to text and play video games all day. In the real world, they would get fired for acting that way, but firing doesn't apply to high school.
Instead, the schools should provide controlled, monitored access to the internet and to collaboration tools (such as a class discussion forum), and open up the teaching process as you have suggested.
I see... So all that texting and high school girls jabbering away is critical thinking, eh?
Cripes, I bet 99.999% of cell conversations in high school revolve around boy/girlfriends, getting high/drunk/laid, and assorted other fantasies.
Cell phones are a huge distraction and should be banned in schools. I think there should be a ceremonial anvil in front of school and the principal should, every week, smash all the confiscated cell phones during school assembly.
Heck, the school could probably auction off the whacks and raise money...
But everyone has something to contribute if they have at least a passing interest. Sometimes, the least skilled member of a group has the most valuable insight, many times, a simple solution is all it requires.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Regardless of whether or not it should be illegal to confiscate items, the fact is that schools have basically the same rights as your parents. So yes, they have every right to search you if that's considered necessary and they can confiscate anything they want.
I personally think that they should only be able to confiscate the battery when it comes to cellphones, because taking a phone is a violation of privacy IMO. (Especially if you're nosing around in the texts or pictures stored on it... but you could, which is enough reason that you shouldn't be able to take the phone.) Taking the battery is good enough.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Children today, especially in inner cities and a lot of afflulent suburbs have been raised to think that rules are for other people, not them. They see their father driving 80 when the speed limit sign says 55. They see their mother trying to get away an a coupon scam at a grocery store. Come April it is all about how much you can hide and get away with on income taxes. Their older brother or sister is downloading music and movies. Don't think the children don't notice this and understand - rules are for other people.
So they go to school and there is a rule against cell phones being turned on. No texting in school. They see someone else texting a friend while taking a test. Well, it's confirmed - rules are for other people.
How exactly do you get children like this to understand a "rule"? It makes no sense to them whatsoever. They go out and get a job and have utterly no comprehension that surfing porn at the office might somehow end up getting them fired. Or stealing from their employer. After all, rules are for other people. They have spent their entire lives being shown over and over that rules do not apply to them.
Rules? Ha. It is currently against the rules to bring guns to school. How many schools have metal detectors to catch guns and knives being brought to school? How many students, in spite of the rules, bring guns anyway? Sorry, like the song says "Up with your rules!"
Until you change that basic philosophy, the only way to do it is a cell phone jammer. Or search the students for cell phones and take the away when one is brought to school. Or confiscate them when they are seen by a teacher. Forget about making rules - only direct action is going to get anywhere.
But if a student can pass the class while playing video games and texting everyday, they shouldn't be penalized for it. Similarly, if I was contracted for making a webpage and I did it in 10 minutes in Kompozer exactly how they wanted it, and the person who contracted me approved of it, it wouldn't have mattered if during that time I was playing WoW on a different monitor.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
I'm sorry but the idea of letting students collaborate using their cell phones is really naive. The first thing most students would do is use them to chat about the latest episode of Lost or something equally disruptive. Don't get me wrong, i'm not trying to say kids these days are any lazier or distracted then i was (after all I am reading slashdot from work). I'm just saying that it would be advantageous to the learning process if we could remove the temptation. Letting students chat about whatever they want in class would be like giving away free bacon at the gym.
If this school had a problem with kids kissing, would they wire their jaws shut?
Rather than implement a costly and complicated technological solution, what this school needs to do is implement some good old-fashioned discipline. If a teacher catches a kid misusing a cell phone, just give the kid a day of detention. That'll get old pretty quickly.
We should be teaching children that obnoxious social behavior has consequences and giving them a chance to learn why such rules exist. The "blocking" solution will just enrage them.
Related: how many of you work at companies who block certain web sites and personal email accounts? And how does that make you feel about your employer?
Back in my day, we didn't have beepers. We didn't have fire alarms. The PA system was the teacher yelling across the room. Barefoot, through five miles of three foot snow, and uphill both ways, dammit!
-Troll, Flamebait, and Offtopic are NOT equivalent to disagreement.
Uh, they can prescribe things that are valid. Closing the stuff off just because they're not a medical doctor is bogus. What about DO's as well, hm?
If it's got a prescription, it probably ought to be allowed unless it's being misused.
The truth of the mater is that Schools should use the sense God gave a rock- not that they seem to be doing this of late. It's damned simple. If it's got a purpose, unless it's being used in a disruptive manner intentionally, you let it stay. If it's disruptive (or potentially so...) and no other legit uses, confiscate the damned things. If they won't let you confiscate, suspend/expel the student on proper grounds- because you'll have them at that point.
But noooo...we can't do that. We can't discipline our kids either- it's "abuse".
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Just because the FCC says blue is an ugly color, and should not be worn, does not mean it is so.
I forget at what time the FCC was attributed the legislative power to pass laws concerning citizens in the US...i didn't quite get that memo! O_O
"OMG did u c wat ashleys waring 2day???"
"OMG I no wat a hore!"
"LOL!!!"
That should earn them a low grade in spelling, but on the other hand a high grade in computing science for implementing a data compression scheme.
Swedish plasma phys. PhD student; MSc EE; knows maths, programming, electronics; finance interest; seeks opportunities
What happens when people living next to schools aren't able to make phone calls? What happens when the jammers interfere with every other wireless device in the school, like wifi and the radios they issue to the administration?
Instead of jamming, which is illegal, why don't schools (and theaters, etc) set up their own phone microcells (picocells?)? Force phones in the building to associate with the inside cell, then set that cell to signal "No Circuits Available". There would also be no connection to the "real" cellular infrastructure, so no problem with incoming calls or texts.
I may not have the terminology correct, but this should work both technically and legally.
I sincerely doubt the next time there's a dire emergency in a school, that the maintenance guy responsible for shutting this thing down, will be willing to go running in to do it.
This is exactly what always bugged me about school. I can imagine this conversation with a professor:
Me: "What? I can't use a calculator to do my physics test?"
Prof: "You have to prove you can solve it!"
Me: "Doesn't knowing how to use the calculator to solve it prove I can solve it?"
Prof: "No, you'd just write a program to solve it for you."
Me: "If I were doing this in the real world, wouldn't I be using a calculator?"
Prof: "... Just do as I say."
I mean really. If you're a physicist, and you're doing complex calculations by hand, wouldn't you be better off if you had a calculator there to do the hard part for you?
Isn't knowing how to make a calculator give you the answer just as good as knowing how to get it by hand (speaking in terms of real-world application)?
But would it really make a difference? In the days before cell phones people would either write notes or at the very least think about the conversation, playing it out in their head. No one is ever 100% focused in school, especially in the classes that they don't want.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
A bucket in each classroom on the teacher's desk.
If the student's phone disrupts the class, it gets turned off and put in the bucket till the end of the day.
If the pull it out and start using it when they're supposed to be paying attention, it gets turned off and put int he bucket till the end of the day.
Those students that can be responsible can keep their phones. Even on their person and quietly receiving texts, emails or whatever, or even use them when they're done with their classwork as long as it doesn't disrupt the class.
Those students that disrupt the class with them, or cannot use them responsibly get them confiscated until the end of the day.
Students that behave can keep their phones, students that can't, can't. Teachers can still use theirs, and so can the administrators, janitors and visitors. And you can buy a lot of buckets for a fraction of $5,000.
Everybody wins but the people selling the questionably legal cell phone jammers.
Question everything
People get really bent out of shape about cellphones. I don't like them going off at inopportune times, either, but I see that as a small price to pay for the convenience of always being able to place a call, or be reached, if I so choose. If you forget to turn the phone off and it goes off in a movie, I'm not going to freak out, as long as you look like you made an honest attempt to silence it ASAP. Just do better next time. Most people don't like looking like an ass in a college class any more than you like having their phone go off. Thankfully cell phone usage has gotten beyond the point where people liked to be seen on them. Remember this?: "Oh, I'm sorry. My CELLULAR phone is ringing." As they proudly whip out a Motorola MicroTac (nothing "micro" about that beast), and yammer on it just to be seen doing it.
The goal of education should be much greater than merely passing and avoiding penalties. If the student finds the material to be easy, they should be encouraged to go beyond the minimum requirements, or they should participate in discussions and help other students to learn.
IMHO the kids liked using their cell phones in my classroom just because they thought it was fun to break the rules. I decided to make the phones work for me. I use twitter, and other SMS stools as a way of communicating to my students outside of the classroom. The students got points for following me on twitter, and often I would put out bonus point questions etc. I realized that an arms race wasn't going to make my job easier so if I couldn't get rid of the cell phone menace I'd do my damnedest to make it a tool for getting things done.
It turned out pretty well last year and I plan on making better use of it this year. Sure if the kids were being obnoxious about texting in class I'd call them out on it but I did find that when they thought of the phone as a tool I had fewer problems.
load "$",8,1
It should be illegal for a teacher to confiscate property from a student. Just because a student is on school property doesn't mean they have no rights regarding search and seizure of personal property. (I'm not sure what the courts have ruled on this, I'm sure they've said something.)
The courts have said students have some rights in terms of search and seizure, but they have much less rights when they're on school grounds than they do off.
Really, the school system needs reformed, more critical thinking, less multiple choice or single-answer questions, because like it or not that isn't the real world.
Right, well the first thing to do is hire more teachers. After all, essay tests take longer to grade than multiple choice/single answer questions. Multiple choice scantron tests can be fed through a computer and graded very quickly, but to grade an essay test, a teacher has to read the essay, think about the answer given, and try to figure out a fair/appropriate grade.
Further, if you want to teach critical thinking, you'll probably have to hire better teachers. Maybe it's just me, but the vast majority of teachers that I had, during the time I went through school, didn't display anything like "good critical thinking skills". After all, you can't teach what you don't know, and you can't grade critical thinking in essays unless you're able to understand and assess an argument that may be relatively subtle or complex. Not that most high school students are all that subtle or complex, but if one student was, you'd want his teachers to recognize that, right?
So we have to hire more teachers and better teachers. The process of hiring better teachers is likely to include paying teachers more. So where is that money going to come from? Where are you going to find money to hire a lot more teachers, and also raise the income of teachers in general?
Nobody is going to want to pay much more money, and if they do, they're going to want assurances that their money is being well spent. According to current beliefs about how to do that, they'll want to encourage competition by having some kind of performance metrics, and having those metrics determine where funding goes. What will happen is someone will come up with standardized tests, and whichever school gets the best test grades will get more funding. Of course, this will encourage schools to teach to the standardized tests so that they can get more funding.
Now all your teachers are focused on teaching their students to perform well on standardized multiple-choice scantron tests. You're back where you started. My question to you would be, what part of that chain of events do you think you can fix? If you can fix it, I'll be a huge fan, but I'm not sure where to begin.
You assume that children will act as responsibly as adults. They are in school to learn and part of that learning is discipline. If children were always allowed to do whatever they wanted, we would still be in caves or extinct. To incent children in this way would require a draconian punishment/reward system.
Now I'm 26 (going on 27) and am already worth enough to never have to work another day in my life (sold my company; started another one, etc).
[Needs Citation]
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." ~Thomas Jefferson
If a teacher sees a student with a cell phone, they confiscate it for the day. If it happens again, the school holds it until a parent comes in to retrieve it. Works for me. There's no education-relation reason a student needs a cell phone while in class.
It is unwise to ascribe motive
There is a difference between someone who knows how to do something by hand, yet uses a calculator to save time, and someone who uses the calculator to get "mysterious results." The exercises do end up paying off in the end.
Before you go off saying "Why, that's not true, CorporateSuit!" then let me remind you of children in the 3rd grade -- good at addition and subtraction, learning multiplication. You and I can rattle off multiplication tables like it's no one's business. We don't have to THINK about what the square root of 64 is. We don't have to think about what the square root of 65 probably is. If our education was pure "learn to use a calculator or the internet to do anything" then you would still be reaching for a calculator when I ask you what 3x8 would be.
That might be acceptible for a marketroid, but programming anything of value would take twice as long -- not to mention, when critical thinking comes into play (real life word problems!) then all your calculators and internets training would be gone to waste.
Calculators and internet make the math behind anything that much easier... but knowing the steps and calculations makes everything much quicker and convenient, and probably keeps the brain somewhat fit.
I am the richest astronaut ever to win the superbowl.
I'm going to assume there are exceptions for dangerous items in your argument. If a teacher sees a student with a gun or a knife, and they have the ability to safely confiscate the item, I'm presuming that teacher has the right to act in the best interests of the classroom and remove those items, correct?
That point aside, Let's run with your argument for a second. A student who is reading a book or doing something else that is not part of the expected behavior within the class is a distraction. You can remove the object that is distracting the student, or you can remove the student. Which is in the better interests of the student (and of the classroom)?
Each individual student has the absolute right to decide for him/herself whether he or she wants to participate in the learning experience, and you are correct - that DOES have its own consequences. But an individual student has no right to decide whether OTHERS get to participate.
Personally, I agree with you. No student should have anything confiscated from them, ever. The teacher should ask for the item and if the student refuses the student should then be removed from the classroom and get to sit in the Principal's office for the remainder of the day until a parent comes in to pick them up.
Longer term, if a student does not want to take advantage of the education the taxpayers are shelling out good money for, they should have the right to leave the classroom as soon as they sign their "no welfare if I fail because of my own decision" disclaimer. But they don't have the right to blow it for anyone else.
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
If kids were involved and interested in their own education with good curricula and competent teachers, they would be to busy learning to text their BFF Jill.
I have to disagree. Not on principle, but on implementation. Students should ALWAYS be encouraged to collaborate, as that is real world. This is not a 21st century phenomena, but has been true as long as there has been formal education. The question is HOW to encourage critical thinking, and less rote memorization. Any good answers to this, while, at the same time, being able to judge who is better than whom?
I'm going to assume there are exceptions for dangerous items in your argument.
That would be a valid assumption.
You can remove the object that is distracting the student, or you can remove the student. Which is in the better interests of the student (and of the classroom)?
Remove the student, if you have to remove anything. A student reading a fantasy book is likely not distracting other students, unless they're mesmerized by the cover art, or if turning the pages is exceptionally noisy.
In any case, if the student is reading instead of paying attention, then the student is obviously not interested; kick them out into the hall and let them keep reading.
What about the person in the next stall over who can hear it happening, but is too scared or possibly unable to directly render aid? Jesus... think for two seconds before you post.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
Quick, what's the log of 37? I can rattle off logs like it's no one's business, but if our eductation was pure "learn to use a slide rule to do anything" then you'd still be reaching for one when I ask you what 3752*6243 would be. That might be acceptable for a marketroid, but for an engineer anyhting would take twice as long if he didn't have his sliderule handy. (You do know kids memorized log tables before the sliderul was common, right?)
Technology means there are things we don't need to learn any more (except as a hobby). That's why technology is good. The day when you'd not be within arms reach of a calculator in some survivalist doomsday fantasy is comeing soon, if it's not already here. We'll probaly see neural interface calculators in my lifetime.
The worst thing is, a lot of smart students think they hate math, because growing up "math" meant "endless repetitive tedium performing calculations by hand". By the time it's not, they've tuned out.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
A teacher at my old high school, who coincidentally was around when my mom was in school, albeit a bit younger, had a couple ways to solve things.
1. I know how to hit you so it doesn't leave bruises, and I know where all the cameras are in this school. When it is my word against yours, you lose.
2. Sue me. I lease a car, rent a home, and all my kids are done with college.
Of all the teachers in my school, he caught the least amount of grief, because he made everybody aware that he was not going to drop his principles for anyone. Seemed to work alright.
Something witty.
IC 35-45-2-5 Interference with the reporting of a crime Sec. 5. A person who, with the intent to commit, conceal, or aid in the commission of a crime, knowingly or intentionally interferes with or prevents an individual from: (1) using a 911 emergency telephone system; (2) obtaining medical assistance; or (3) making a report to a law enforcement officer; commits interference with the reporting of a crime, a Class A misdemeanor. As added by P.L.71-2002, SEC.1.
I have a lot of problems with this, not to mention the fact that it can be difficult to control the range of such things.
You never know what is going to happen, and because of that the potential risk and issues that go along with jamming outweigh the benefits of jaming.
If the school can't find a better way to prevent cellphone froms becoming an distractiong, that's an indictment of whatever they're currently trying, not an indicator that they need to unlawfully repress a vital communications technology.
There is a difference between someone who knows how to do something by hand, yet uses a calculator to save time, and someone who uses the calculator to get "mysterious results."
While I understand your point, I think you answered it yourself:
when critical thinking comes into play (real life word problems!) then all your calculators and internets training would be gone to waste.
Which is exactly what we should be focusing on. If a student wants to use a calculator to do the boring integration or derivative calculation, we should let them, because our curriculum should be focusing on real-world problems, not on artificial problems.
In other words, we should be grading based on those real-world problems at least as much as we grade on the "what's d/dx of x^2 + x + 3" type of problem.
If a student doesn't know how to do those real-world problems, they're not going to know how whether or not they've done the calculus by hand or on the calculator.
Physics, for example, is not so much about knowing how to do the math as it is about knowing what equation to apply. Whether or not I use a calculator to get the numeric answer is irrelevant to whether I know which equation to use, and the curriculum should be designed to match.
In my opinion, if banning calculators during a math course makes people get better grades, we're designing the course wrong, because in the real world, you'd better be using a calculator - at least to verify your results, if nothing else!
Good point.
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
Monetize them instead of jamming them.
(1) Put one or more micro-cells in the school so that's what the phone will attach to, instead of the regular towers.
(2) When calls go through those micro-cells, add a surcharge of $10/minute
(3) Use the money obtained to fund the school system
Frankly, someone under 18 can't sign a cell contract, so kids with cell phones are kids with rich parents who have enough disposable income to buy their kids a cell phone, and who can afford to pay proportionally more in order to fund the schools, and probably should be doing so, in the first place.
-- Terry
I"m 40 years old. I graduated from a small-town high school in 1986.
We had rules, and we had to follow them, or things happened.
Calculators were allowed for some things, not for others.
Notes were allowed for some things, not for others.
Specific attire was required - long pants, shirts without obscene, drug, or alcohol related imagery or phrases.
If you acted up, you got detention at school and most likely punished at home as well.
If you had stuff you weren't supposed to have - like hand-held electronic games during class - those things got taken away. (Yes, such things did exist. They were primitive, but they existed.)
But, apparently, those methods of child management no longer work.
Wouldn't a school policy of phone confiscation handle this? For example:
"Cell phones may not be powered on between 8:00 and 3:00, except during scheduled lunch or study hall. If they are seen in use or observed to be powered on, they will be confiscated until a parent comes in to the office to retrieve them."
The preferred solution is to not have a problem.
When did adults start acting responsibly?
At my high school, you were allowed to have cell phones if you turned them off in class. If your cell went off in class, though, you could be sure of getting detention. Since turning off cell phones during meetings and the like is good etiquette outside of high school too, I say let the students have their phones if only for a valuable learning experience.
Sounds good, but it's too complicated. The school office has better things to do than track how many times they've confiscated Johnny's iPod.
Every time it is confiscated, the parent has to come in, to the office, and retrieve the item.
The preferred solution is to not have a problem.
Build a small explosively pumped flux compression generator as a physics project, ensure the schools computers and powered down, and voila no cell phones. Educational AND effective.
Rather then jam the signal, why not instead hi-jack the phones through a special cell transmitter? This way, all attempted outbound and inbound calls would be blocked with an automated message informing those effected. With the exception of 911 and other emergency numbers.
Life is not for the lazy.
I do see the point here. Students do need to learn to think, not just regurgitate. But, allowing phones in class is more likely to be a distraction to the student using it, and possibly other students as well. Young kids especially are still learning how to learn, and ensuring that students learn to think and work individually is more important than making it like the "real world", for the same reasons we don't kick our child out of the house if he doesn't finish all his chores (even though in the real world, an adult may lose his job if he doesn't perform adequately).
Making use of phones part of classroom activities is a problem anyway, because not every student has a phone, and not every student that does have a phone has one with the same capabilities. Some parents decide their kids don't need cell phones, and some parents can't afford to give their kids a phone.
Really, cell phone use in the classroom should not be allowed, and if the rule is broken, the phone sits on top of the teacher's desk for the rest of the day/period (so the student can see clearly that the teacher is not "snooping" in it), and the infraction documented. Parents should be notified at the beginning of the school year that phone use in the classroom is not allowed, and what the consequences are, and then those consequences should be applied. Maybe after so many infractions, the phone is not given back to the student, but the parent has to come get it, for example. You don't have to stop the kid from having the phone in his possession, but if it makes noise, or is brought out of the pocket/bag/whatever during class, then there's a problem.
Shut down in case of emergency? But phones are how emergencies are reported!
Reminds me of the "Emergency Broadcast System"--which comedians wondered why it wasn't used during 9/11...
we don't have the funding for over time to do breakfast clubs any more.
You can pay for better jamming equipment that doesn't jam emergency numbers. that is quite a bit more expensive, but basically it works like those cell phone repeaters people can buy to get better coverage in their house. It catches the call and redirects it. The demos for them in the stores are fun because you can dial out and it redirects all calls to a voice recording showing that it did indeed catch your call and do something with it.
If they do legalize jamming, I think the requirement should be zero jamming of emergency services. such a requirement, from my layman's perspective, seems reasonable.
(note - I didn't RTFA. I like to express my uninformed opinions on a wide range of topics)
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
just make a rule that cell phones are banned from school.
Anyone caught with a cell phone gets detention or suspension for repeated offenses.
If parents want to reach a child in emergency they can call the office and have them paged, if a student has an emergency they can use the office phone.
Reasons for banning cell phones:
#1 They distract class.
#2 They are used for cheating.
#3 They are used for passing notes via texting.
#4 They stop the student from learning.
#5 Other students can easily steal them.
#6 They can be used for playing games instead of learning.
#7 They can be used for listening to music instead of learning.
#8 They can be used for Internet surfing instead of learning.
#9 They make noises that interfere the class.
#10 They are counter-productive to the learning process for many other reasons.
Teachers need to have cell phone detectors to sniff out the illegal use of cell phones. No more body searching, just use the cell phone detectors.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
you'd still be reaching for one when I ask you what 3752*6243 would be.
I'd know it would be abaout 24,000,000, as I got in the habit to estimate in the years before calculators were allowed. I'd then put it in a calculator and get one of these numbers, depending on what buttons were sticky, what base it was in, etc
2197536
23423736
356245110
0.6
(you get my drift)
Sadly you see people at the supermarket asking each other if 12 for £5.60 is cheaper than 9 for £4.20
Most school districts are having their funding cut to the bone right now and are having to lay off teachers, and they have $5K to spend on THIS? Fail, fail, fail. Try actually *gasp!* enforcing the existing rules, get parents to participate in their kids actually following said rules, and NOT spend money on stupid things. Better yet just change the rules so you aren't even allowed a cellphone on school grounds. Besides all this, I'm sure the legal bills from being sued by people NOT on school grounds who have their cellphone service interrupted will be much in excess of $5000 by themselves. Nope, stupid idea.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
First off, welcome to killing the well-trained "dial 911 for any problem anywhere". And good luck with the alarm company's wireless backup. And should any maintenance be done on the building, by any contractors, I guess they won't be able to talk to each other, or back to HQ. And should there be some emergency when the one guy with the key to the jammer isn't around, or is in the bathroom, I guess fire fighters can't find each other anymore.
All of that aside, on the perfect day, where nothing in the buliding is anything but perfect, what's with these one-way emergencies?
What about emergencies outside the building that require the use of someone inside the buliding? What about a parent requiring a student child in an emergency? Or what about a teacher's child in another school across town getting hurt -- sorry, no way to reach Mom -- listed as the emergency contact of course -- because she's an astronaut and is currently en route to Jupiter. oh wait, she's two kilometres away in a school, and equally unreachable.
Oh, and I hope that the jammer doesn't go through the external walls of the building, into the neighbour's property.
So, in the end, humans have about five advantages over most other species (on this planet or presumably elsewhere). One of them is co-ordinated communication, and is the largest push in technology (always has been). It's how we guage the intelligence of other species, how we assess other cultures, and how we benchmark historical civilizations. But here, in schools, someone intends to destroy it -- not only for no good reason, but for a worthless and only temporary-guaranteed-to-fail-in-the-medium-term reason.
And these are educators. . . not of my children.
Prisons with problems with cellphone use should stop blaming prisoners and start dealing with their out-of-control guards who are smuggling in god-knows-what.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
For $5,000 I can supply them with an impressive-looking device whose interference with cell phones is completely legal. The FCC and the students won't even be able to detect any interference from the device. :-)
Seeing as how they found out from the FCC that such a plan would in fact be illegal they've given up on the idea: http://www.kcci.com/news/20237550/detail.html The priorities of the schools here are just insane.. first the Des Moines schools decide to become the Internet Police of their students both in and out of school, now this..
Taking the battery is good enough.
My phone has a non-removable battery, you insensitive clod!
but there's no way to install that kind of passive material in a school for the $5K budget specified assuming that it's COTS. One classroom, maybe.
Tech Public Policy stuff
The defibrillator is no more of a distraction than the dead kid on the floor. The worst day to get anything done in class were the days with dead kids left laying about :(
Even if this is found legal and they try to use it the parents are going to raise hell. In the school system my mother works in they tried to ban the kids from being able to bring cell phones into the school and the parents wouldn't let that fly. Parents see it as a long leash they can put on their children. Some of these parents are so paranoid that even the idea of not being able to call there children directly frightens them.
sorry for my comments, I'm drunk
..teacher's and administrator's phones. This is not right. The adults need to be able to communicate for emergencies. There's no guarantee there is a landline in every room or that it will work (such as in a fire). The way to handle it is 1 day in school suspension for every classroom interruption due to cell phones.
Camping on quad since 1996.
You can only pass notes to people near you. With a 'phone you can be distracted by anybody, anywhere.
No sig today...
Yes, let's disadvantage every student in the country just in case the unthinkable happens.
Airport security works on the same principle. Don't you think the paranoia cancer has spread far enough?
Maybe pulling out a phone will just move you further up the shooter's "troublemaker" list. Ever think of that...?
No sig today...
Good luck with that one...seriously.
No sig today...
All the hard-line phones are still functional. As a reminder, before the late 90s, it was only those hard-line phones available in the first place --- and nothing catastrophic came about due to lack of mobile devices in the hands of students in emergencies...
I know if an emergency were to happen in a public school I'd hope the kids were following the best possible procedures to get/be safe instead of making phone calls.
What they should do is hold strict policy to ban the use of the cellphones, cite the kids once notifying the parents, and then expel the kid the second time. When Jimmy has to go to a crappy school, or his parents have to drive him halfway across the county to get to school --- then maybe he will listen.
AMEN!
The Touchy-Feely Liberals would have you believe that the police will always be there in time to protect you and catch the criminals that victimize you.
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
Well, since the FCC says you cant have them here in the US, i think that question has been answered pretty clearly. I think the goal should be getting the laws changed to something more rational, not questioning what is on the books now.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Until students start carrying spare batteries.
ERROR: SIG NOT FOUND (A)bort, (R)etry, (F)ail?:
Buy one of these for each classroom: http://www.universalpart.com/Cellular-Phone-emf-Detection-Meter_item_6111.html That will detect the signal from a phone, then someone is busted.
Every rookie teacher spends their first year thinking more discipline and heavier enforcement is the answer. Good teachers grow out of that, and realize that their initial problems stem from a lack of teaching skills.
Any teacher who thinks the answer to their problem is a Faraday cage or a radio jammer needs to drop the chalk and walk away from the blackboard.
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
I was with you up until the "fourth offense" part. I'm assuming that the unwritten portion of this rule is that once confiscated a fourth time, the device would not be returned to anyone, even a parent.
If I'm misunderstanding, then that's alright.
If I'm not, however, and the parent also agrees that it's a fitting punishment for the student, then that's also alright.
If I'm not and the parent instructs the school to remand the device to their custody and the school refuses, destroying the device anyway then THAT. IS. UNACCEPTABLE.
I don't care how disruptive a device may be, it absolutely, positively must be returned to a parent upon said parent's demand every single time. I'd even go so far as to say that it must be returned whether or not the parent is willing to "sit down with" whatever school official is in charge of the device-confiscation department. At the end of the day, my taxes still pay their salary, and when push comes to shove school officials should be required to concede to parents' demands (at least where property is concerned) each and every time. Kick the student out, fine, that's been done since the dawn of education, but you don't tell parents "no" when they expect their property back.
The "back in my day" crowd can whine and complain all they want. Taking the property of a student and then destroying it, all the while refusing to hand it over to the parent (i.e. taxpayer) should be punishable as either larceny, vandalism, or perhaps both. And the individuals directly responsible for the actions (i.e. whose hands physically took possession of and/or destroyed the property) should be held criminally liable.
If they don't like it, fine, I pull my kid and investigate alternative education options. Whether this means private schools, homeschooling, or whatever other solution may present itself doesn't matter to me. At that point my kid will be beyond the reach of what would constitute an increasingly totalitarian school administration and I'd be happy enough with that for the time being.
I can hear the responses right now: "And they'd be happy to be rid of a short-tempered asshole like you." Yes. I'm sure they would, and I'd be equally happy to be rid of them, so everybody's happy. Fine by me. It bears mentioning that along with investigating alternatives to the school that STOLE my child's (or my) property, I'd be investigating what legal recourse I had in terms of pressing criminal charges against either the school, the teacher him/herself, or again, both. Fuck lawsuits, I'd want jail time for the school-official criminals. Really, really humiliating and degrading public service at the least.
Bottom line: you don't take someone else's shit and destroy it. I don't care who you are.
Help protect civil rights from abuse by the TSA - visit TSA News Blog.
http://www.tsanewsblog.com
That won't just block students it will block teachers, trades persons, visitors...
;)
Not all emergencies are about what happens in the school, some pertain to parent issues.
Those sort of issues come to the surface when class sizes are too large and the school takes a fundamentalist approach to education and ignores the need to teach ethics, social behaviour, basic psychology and etiquette.
"Please take off your hats, turn off your phone and leave the attitude at the door."
Better to train them in schools, that what schools are for than have to slap them in a movie theatre.
imagine this situation:
i have done a particular topic in high school, then in 1st year of college as well, now when it is being repeated in 2nd year, maybe i just want to sit at the back of class while passively listening to the lecture to know if there is something new and when the new part comes i can write it down/pay attention
eg:-
done OOPS and classes in 12th class
now in 2nd year the same stuff is being done so you read a book, but as you are also passively listening, you notice that a particular topic in classes was not done earlier so you stop reading for a while and understand that , then go back to your book
A number of posters have asked why not just make a rule and have school personnel enforce it. Schools can impose various punishments. The answer is that punishment doesn't work as a behavior mod. That is to say that it's self defeating. The effect of punishment over time is that the student will just learn to live with whatever the consequence is for texting, because they get the reward first. Texting during class has some kind of fantastic appeal that I won't ever understand. More than texting any other time, it's imperative that it be done during the 45 minutes that I'm teaching math. Sending pictures, whatever it is. The best way to change the behavior is not punishment, but extinction. That is, make it so that nothing happens when they engage in the behavior. So, if the school could find a way to just make texting not work, that would be the ideal. Remove the reward. There are flaws to the technical solution of rendering phones inoperable, again as others have noted.
Theoretically, if the student population at (say) a high school were not turning over every 4 years, the school might be able to get away with blocking for a while, then removing the blocking and just telling people that phones don't work in school. It's like pretending to tie your horse up and it thinks it's restrained but it really isn't.
The other argument against yet another school rule and enforcement is that teachers and administrators don't have time for that. There are better things we could be doing with instructional time than confiscating cell phones.
When the axe came to the forest, the trees said, "Look out - the handle was once one of us."
The jamming of cell phones will cost a life and spark a real controversy. I say it here first.
Why my teachers are always able to catch those who use their phones during class...?
Hmm. Maybe there're some mysterious Chinese techniques? But in fact almost all teachers can easily catch the texters, here in China.
Sure, everyone's always ready to jump on kids and deprive them of 1 more thing that makes their lives more pleasant, but does anyone remember Columbine, where cell phones gave authorities better insight into what was going on?
Any serious attacker now will, if the can, attempt to take out the phones, and if successful, they can chain the doors and just keep going until the kill absolutely everybody, without a single alarm getting outside the building.
When I was a kid, I once caught H from my mother for referring to the school as a prison, but it's really not a coincidence, I think, that this school, and a lot of prisons, are both trying to jam cell phones.
Hopefully, the FCC will continue to vigorously enforce the law, and fine the socks off anyone they catch with a cell phone jammer.
I don't have a problem with that at all, having done it myself; if the student is not being disruptive, there's no reason to kick them out into the hall, regardless of whether or not they're paying attention.
I work at a large high school (2000 students) and this is not an issue. In the student agreement it is spelled out that you use your phone during class - you loose it until school is out that day. Period.
Since phones and texting is a major social thing for kids - most kids follow the rules. Others loose their phones.
In fact we are looking at a new service that allows a teacher to easily create a number of polls or quizzes that students can access via their cell phones (during class). The deal here is the responses are anonymous which reduces the stigma of being wrong or allows kids who a shy to participate. For the teacher its a quick way to see how many kids picked up a new concept and how many are still confused.
We need to encourage - but control - the use of technology in learning.
Its not the years, its the mileage
What these "Brainiacs" at St. Ansgar have failed to realize is that in order to cover the whole school they would also have to jam the surrounding public area. Maybe someone in their science department should enlighten them to how radio signals propagate!
There is no way to restrict the jamming to just the school! Hell if they are paying $5000 for the system it could probably jam as far as five miles which in an urban area would be a disaster! This is the reason its against the law to even build one in the US.
They should just go with the system the NYC schools use. Student cell phones are banned from school property and are confiscated when found.
ONE instance of someone breaking a leg or having an emergency and not being able to dial 911 and they'll have a lawsuit pending. Dumb.
Insert
I'm a computer tech for a district with many buildings. The only way I can be reached most of the week is via my Blackberry.
Our custodial staff all have two-way pagers so they can be paged to clean-ups and the like.
Yes the buildings have PA systems, but those are used at a minimum so they don't interfere with classes.
This idea is just stupid on so many levels. I have to agree with many of the posters here. if you want to make a policy saying students can't use cell phones in school, fine. Then just enforce it by taking them away until the end of the day.
for those in the non-us, how do they handle it there? i've heard that students in europe were having cell phones far earlier than those in the US.
Just block text messaging. And perhaps every phone number but 911. If it's an emergency, the phone can still be useful.
There may be some legal issues, but how about a voluntary cell-phone confiscation waiver, signed by the parent/guardian? If caught using cellphone in an un-authorized manner (time, place, etc) the phone would be confiscated until the end of class/day (depending on offense I would guess). After the confiscation, the phone would be returned to the student, and a letter would be sent to the parent if necessary(depending on the offense-ringing because you forgot to turn it off is different from using it to cheat.). The parent/guardian would not have to sign the waiver, but if they didn't, then they would be called to the school to deal with the issue EVERYTIME there was a transgression. The kids get to keep their phones in case of emergencies, and if they couldn't use it responsibly, eventually the parent would tire of coming to the school (if they didn't tire the first time), and either confiscate it from the kid permanently, or until the evening/weekend.
Faraday cage ... kids ... chewing gum ...
The instant solution for no phones during class is to suffocate them?
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
If students could put the appropriate steps onto paper and use the calculator to crunch the hard parts, that would be one thing.
What you get, though, is students using a "magic formula" and putting a single number as the answer. If the answer is incorrect, you can't give any partial credit because you don't even know what happened – they might have misplaced a parenthesis or forgotten a negative (which perhaps shouldn't cost them too much credit on that problem) or they could have used a completely wrong formula (which probably should get them a zero for that problem). Since you don't know, you can't give partial credit.
Since you're probably not going to get most of the answers 100% correct, you'd damn well better show your steps or you'll get zeros on a bunch of the problems. That's bad for grades, bad for averages, and instructors don't like it. Hence, you don't get to use a calculator.
Spoken as a former student... and FWIW, most of my instructors allowed students to use calculators, however, the partial credit issue was made clear. Show work, or you'll risk a zero on that problem. You might even lose partial credit if the answer was correct and you failed to show your work.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
As opposed to that one guy who wanted to collaborate, but had to build the great pyramids all by himself? Collaboration only works in the real world to the degree that those involved are competent individually and make individual efforts, and education has evolved for millenia accordingly. The vast majority of time in a modern eduction is spent on activities that are collaborative, or that can be to a certain degree, such as class discussions, group projects, and homework. Even studying for tests is often a collaborative activity. You still need a means of occasionally measuring individual contribution, and tests are one of the best, albeit imperfect, methods we have for that. If I have to go ask a colleague every time my boss asks a question, I'm not going to keep my job very long.
This space intentionally left blank.