Cell phones in the Classroom: Tool or Toy

"You are not attending!" said the Mouse to Alice severely. "What are you thinking of?"

-Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

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I have this bad habit of sitting in my car in the parking lot after I get to work to enjoy a little fresh air and sunshine before I go into my windowless office for several hours.  I use the time to check email, Facebook, Twitter, etc. on my smartphone. The other day, I came across this article on Inside Higher Ed's Facebook feed.  This was about Beloit College's annual Freshman Mindset List for freshmen entering college this year for the class of 2019. I found this comment about the proliferation of cell phones very timely.

I've been thinking a lot about student engagement lately, and how we can foster an interest in lifelong learning in our students.  If you read my blog post on learning about Pluto from Twitter, you will know that I learn a lot from my phone.  Whether it's tweets or Facebook posts or Instagram photos, there is so much fascinating information right at my fingertips.

I know a lot of people view cell phones as distractions.  I view them as a learning gold mine! If I want to know something, I can look it up right away on my smartphone.  When I was in college, if you wanted to look something up, it meant going to this big building called a library, flipping through cards in the aptly named card catalog or paging through the Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature, and then venturing in the dimly lit (and odd smelling) stacks and hoping the book or journal you wanted was there - and intact, since someone could have just ripped out the article you wanted.

Just to show you the apple doesn't fall far from the tree, I gave my old iPad to my mother, who lives in a retirement community.  She takes it with her to meals, carrying it in the basket of her walker.  Whenever there is an argument among the old widow ladies, she pulls out her iPad, looks up the question, and settles the argument.

That got me thinking about how we can encourage students to use their phones as tools rather than toys.  In researching this topic, I came across an interesting article about what affects encoding into long term memory more, engagement or attention.  Not unsurprisingly, it's engagement.  Students can be paying attention to everything you say in a classroom, but if they don't have some level of interest in the topic, if they aren't curious about it, if they aren't motivated in some way to interact with the material, whatever they attend to will just go right out of short term memory and never be encoded.

Which brings me to the idea of using cell phones to foster student engagement.  Now, of course, when a student is looking at their crotch and smiling, chances are they aren't googling Maslow's hierarchy of needs.  But what if instead of making them hide their cell phones away, we encourage them to use them - just in a way that's more beneficial?

According to this infographic (if anyone can find the original source of this data, please leave it in the comments), 77% of college student smartphone users check their phone first thing in the morning.  92% use it during idle times at work or at school.  Two-thirds use it to read news articles, while four-fifths uses it for school related tasks.

And half of them use it when they are in the bathroom.

That sounds like a great opportunity use their cell phones to communicate with them and to encourage them to communicate with each other outside of the classroom (instead of catching them when you can, you can catch them IN the can...). You don't have to give out your personal phone number.  There is a free app and a website called Remind that allows you to contact students via text messages, either through the Remind.com web site or using the app on your phone. You set up a class on Remind (one Remind class of each section you teach), and give the class code to students.  They sign up by texting the class code to specific number. You can set up text messages on the web site in advance to be sent out on the date you select, you can text the entire class either from the web site or the app, or you can text an individual student.  They can text you back, and you can respond to them - again, all without giving out your personal cell phone number.

You could use the scheduling feature to send out reminders for assignment due dates or when tests are due.  You could use the individual feature to text a student who hasn't been to class for a couple of days or who is falling behind in their work. We all know how hard it is to get students to read their student email...but I bet they check their phone when that text message chimes.

But what about in class?  How do we get them to think of it as a tool in class, not a toy they have to put away? Do you remember the old clicker systems from 4 or 5 years ago?  You could embed questions in a PowerPoint that students would answer using these little handheld devices.  The clickers of today are cell phones.  You set up your poll questions on a web site, and as you present them (either on the web or in PowerPoint), students use there cell phones to respond, again, either by text or on a web site.

The one I've recommended is PollEverywhere. With PollEverywhere, you create poll questions on a web site or an app. They can be multiple choice, open-ended, or a clickable image. You can also use it to allow students to ask questions anonymously or to brainstorm ideas for problem solving. With a free account, you can create several polls but each poll can only accept up to 40 responses, and you can't track responses or participants.  You can upgrade to a paid account if you want more information about your users or large number of responses.

Another app that might be of interest is LiveBinders. Again, this is available as a website and as an app.  Livebinders is an aggregation tool that allows you store an organize a variety of resources from websites to videos to other files you upload. You can create a binder of organized information sources for students to use, or they could create their own to share with the class.  Again, they can access the binders you share with them via the web or via the app, but either way, they can use their smart phone.

I created a LiveBinder for cell phone use in the classroom. You can view it without signing up for LiveBinders.  You will find a binder with two tabs, one containing research on student cell phone use and one containing links to tools and other information about how to use the cell phone in the classroom.  The nice thing about a binder like that is I can update it as needed, and you can check back periodically to see if I've added anything. If you create your own account, you can add my binder to your shelf!

Students can create their own LiveBinder accounts and then collaborate on their own binders.  If you have a group research project, you can show them a sample binder, get them started on their own, and then they can create their own binders to share with you - all from their phone, if they want.

Another learning tool is Quizlet. Again, Quizlet is available as a website and as an app.  Remember the old flashcards we used to make when we were in school? Quizlet is the 21st century version of those.  You can create a list of questions for your students to test themselves on, and then they log into their Quizlet app on their phone to test themselves on their questions. Students can also make their own flashcards from which to study.

Finally, students can read their textbooks on their phones!  Coursesmart is an ebook provider from which students can buy or rent textbooks.  Faculty can get free access to books; I don't use paper books any more.  I can access all my textbooks and preview new ones either on the Coursesmart web site, on my iPad, or on my phone. the advantage of an ebook over a paper one is searching; I can search the ebook for a specific term and then tell students to look on a specific page for more information to their questions.  Can't do that with a paper book...

That is just the briefest taste of ways you can use cell phones as a learning tool, both in and out of the classroom. Don't forget to check back to my LiveBinder to see what else I find in the future!