Sobering article on kids tuned out of education, lost in their cell phones
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So, how can the average student use all of this knowledge that is instantly available in the palm of their hand to improve their grades in school?
That is the $64,000 question no one can seem to answer.
That's the challenge.
Any sort of rote memorization is easily pulled up on Google or spit out by ChatGPT. It's the ad-hoc thinking - writing an essay in class with no phones - that's the hardest to "cheat."
Any sort of rote memorization is easily pulled up on Google or spit out by ChatGPT. It's the ad-hoc thinking - writing an essay in class with no phones - that's the hardest to "cheat."
Could also be the reason why IQ has dropped among younger Americans...no need to actually think or memorize these days.
Teaching French in an inner-city high school, I had many goals in addition to ensuring that students who passed my classes had the required proficiency for the level. One of those goals was ensuring that students who couldn't manage themselves developed the skill before signing for college loans. So my classroom management followed what I called the judo method of discipline, which used the students' momentum against them, and ideally left me pointing out that they had just harmed themselves.
My mantra for self-management was posted on the wall and at the top of the day's notes: You are the captain of your own ship. You can sail it into the reef if you like. I attached a picture of the poster, with the captain of the Costa Concordia and his ship featured to drive in the point for visual learners.
When it came to cell phones, I found that the best defense was a good offense, so I replaced the dictionaries with the WordReference app and had lessons demonstrating the usefulness of Google Translate for pronunciation coupled with its inability to express nuances of meaning using various verb tenses. It had improved substantially by the time that the pandemic sent me into early retirement, but it is only a tool to build proficiency. It was on me to design assignments and assessments that could not be gamed by using online resources.
For students who chose to watch movies or play games in class, I would ask every day if they might decide to learn some French that day, reminding them that if they did not learn French, that I wanted them to fail the class. I wanted them to learn French, but not unwillingly. Forced learning is as inauthentic as turning students into data points to illustrate on your wall. I refused to do either. That was one of the advantages of being in a school that struggled to find teachers. I had a lot of autonomy because I handled my own problems in my own classroom and rarely sent anyone to the office. If they got a buzz from my room, they came running because it must be something big.
I do think that there is a middle way in which we teach children how to use the power of smartphones intelligently. I just think that it would likely be doomed to failure in the current environment where too many factions have too much power over children and putting everyone else's concerns over those of the children themselves.
I guess it depends on the environment and age of kids. There was a school district in a low income area of a city, that banned cell phones and the problems they had been having with fights, stopped almost instantly. Turned out, if the kids couldn't film it and upload the video, it wasn't worth doing.
When I was in school, we taught ourselves the sign language alphabet, and sent each other messages across the room that way, LOL. In between we were adding to our gum wrapper chains, or making witch's brooms out of yarn on our hands. Yes, I'm ancient, LOL.
Sedating is a good word for it. It's really become another drug.
I teach at a pretty low-income high school and we don't have fights, or very rarely. They are very zero tolerance about it. Any hint of fighting or weapons on school grounds and you are instantly suspended or expelled and wind up at the district's alternative campus.
Thinking about it, some things I don't really see much anymore with the universal advent of smart phones:
students carving names or profanity on wooden desks and cabinets
students writing on desks and cabinets
gum stuck to everything (under chairs and desks)
spitballs and paper balls scattered about
students messing with equipment and getting into things
graffiti in the halls (might also be due to high def security cameras everywhere)
students leaning back and breaking chair legs and stools
What I still see is students vaping in the parking lot before and after school. That hasn't changed. Although in my day it was just smoking, drinking, and using chewing tobacco.
Any sort of rote memorization is easily pulled up on Google or spit out by ChatGPT. It's the ad-hoc thinking - writing an essay in class with no phones - that's the hardest to "cheat."
ChatGTP works amazingly well for essays, I would be surprised if most kids are even writing them themselves these days. All you have to do is ask it to write a 1500 word essay on the impact of the automobile on the industrial revolution, and in two seconds, you’ll have a well-written essay. Hopefully there are some guard rails up around this, where the teachers require references but I’m not sure.
I teach at a pretty low-income high school and we don't have fights, or very rarely. They are very zero tolerance about it. Any hint of fighting or weapons on school grounds and you are instantly suspended or expelled and wind up at the district's alternative campus.
Thinking about it, some things I don't really see much anymore with the universal advent of smart phones:
students carving names or profanity on wooden desks and cabinets
students writing on desks and cabinets
gum stuck to everything (under chairs and desks)
spitballs and paper balls scattered about
students messing with equipment and getting into things
graffiti in the halls (might also be due to high def security cameras everywhere)
students leaning back and breaking chair legs and stools
What I still see is students vaping in the parking lot before and after school. That hasn't changed. Although in my day it was just smoking, drinking, and using chewing tobacco.
As far as the graffiti and carving names in a desk, I have not seen wooden desks in many many years, and they make bathroom stalls now in a material that you can’t write on. I can imagine what cell phone use would have to do with chewing gum though.
The suggestion that a roomful of children "sedated" or electronically restrained, if you will, by cell phones rather than interacting with each other, however boisterously, is a positive is chilling, IMO.
It's not the phone itself that is a problem. They are some of the most useful and powerful tools every created by people. You have basically all the world's knowledge - the internet - on a device that fits in the palm of your hand with a connection basically anywhere that isn't truly remote.
I suspect that when television was invented, it was expected to become a valuable service for humanity.
Instead it became primarily a vehicle for the delivery of superficial entertainment, hence an FCC commissioner's famous remark about the "vast wasteland."
So certainly phones could be used in a positive way... but it seems that most of the time, they aren't.
The suggestion that a roomful of children "sedated" or electronically restrained, if you will, by cell phones rather than interacting with each other, however boisterously, is a positive is chilling, IMO.
In an engaging classroom, students are actively engaged in the lesson or class activities. That is the same today as in the past.
I'm just pointing out that DISENGAGEMENT has taken new forms with the advent of cell phones. In the past, disengaged students who are bored and NOT doing the lesson would find other disruptive ways to distract themselves, throwing stuff, hassling other students, talking to each other, annoying each other, etc. Today those same students who in the past might have been doing other off-task things now choose to disengage from the class by pulling out their phones. So in the past an out-of-control classroom might have been a noisy place with a lot of kids up, running around, misbehaving, and generally causing chaos. While today an out-of-control classroom might be quiet with a bunch of disengaged students on their phones.
ChatGTP works amazingly well for essays, I would be surprised if most kids are even writing them themselves these days. All you have to do is ask it to write a 1500 word essay on the impact of the automobile on the industrial revolution, and in two seconds, you’ll have a well-written essay. Hopefully there are some guard rails up around this, where the teachers require references but I’m not sure.
Teachers are also using ChatGP to grade homework and tests.
The irony of it all...both teachers and students using ChatGP for education.
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