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Schools That Ban Mobile Phones See Better Academic Results
HughPickens.com writes: Jamie Doward reports at The Guardian that according to a recent study in the UK, the effect of banning mobile phones from school premises adds up to the equivalent of an extra week's schooling over a pupil's academic year with the test scores of students aged 16 improved by 6.4% after schools banned mobile phones, "We found that not only did student achievement improve, but also that low-achieving and low-income students gained the most. We found the impact of banning phones for these students was equivalent to an additional hour a week in school, or to increasing the school year by five days." In the UK, more than 90% of teenagers own a mobile phone; in the US, just under three quarters have one. In a survey conducted in 2001, no school banned mobiles. By 2007, this had risen to 50%, and by 2012 some 98% of schools either did not allow phones on school premises or required them to be handed in at the beginning of the day. But some schools are starting to allow limited use of the devices. New York mayor Bill de Blasio has lifted a 10-year ban on phones on school premises, with the city's chancellor of schools stating that it would reduce inequality.
The research was carried out at Birmingham, London, Leicester and Manchester schools before and after bans were introduced (PDF). It factored in characteristics such as gender, eligibility for free school meals, special educational needs status and prior educational attainment. "Technological advancements are commonly viewed as increasing productivity," write Louis-Philippe Beland and Richard Murphy. "Modern technology is used in the classroom to engage students and improve performance. There are, however, potential drawbacks as well, as they could lead to distractions."
The research was carried out at Birmingham, London, Leicester and Manchester schools before and after bans were introduced (PDF). It factored in characteristics such as gender, eligibility for free school meals, special educational needs status and prior educational attainment. "Technological advancements are commonly viewed as increasing productivity," write Louis-Philippe Beland and Richard Murphy. "Modern technology is used in the classroom to engage students and improve performance. There are, however, potential drawbacks as well, as they could lead to distractions."
If that's really what lifting the ban does, then I'm fine with it. I just don't see how allowing phones will accomplish this (ie - I have an iPhone 6 and you're stuck with a hand-me-down MicroTac).
Lower-income schools tend to have more security such as metal detectors and bag searches in NYC. This caused an odd business to pop into existence where students would pay private businesses (usually vans that stopped outside the schools in the mornings and afternoons) to store the phones during the day. Public schools in more affluent areas don't have these security measures, so students there could get away with just carrying the devices into the school. Keep in mind a lot of kids walk to school in NYC so the worse the neighborhood, the more you probably want your kid to have a phone to call home in case of emergency, and yet due to the increased school security and the blanket ban on cell phones, they are more likely to be the ones forced to either not do so or pay for storage during the day.
I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
>as such the computer would only do the one function that we were to engage in.
Then you had kids like me, who would hit CTRL-RESET to drop to BASIC, then write amusing programs to pass the time. :)
...we need computing platforms that are restricted in the use of the computer, to make it function better as an educational platform.
Cheap Chromebooks the sim card explicitly removed and without the wifi password used to fill that niche, but now most new Chromebooks are touch-enabled and they'll be able to run Android soon. In other words, Google is about to mess it all up for parents.
And it won't be long until one kid figures out how he can download an apk to a usb stick or a memory card, and can play it on a friend's Chromebook. By the time 5th period rolls around, everyone in his school will have seen it done. And within a week or two, all kids who use Chromebooks in the entire United States will have seen it done (even if they themselves do not have direct internet access).
At that point, parents will just have resell their Chromebooks on Ebay and trade them in, for either paper notepads or old-fashioned electric type-writers. Or they'll be forced to just place the Chromebooks under lock and key like they've been forced to do with the wifi hub, the router, and everything else.