Teachers give students smart phones to text in class

November 6, 11:56 AMWorkplace Training and Development ExaminerLenn Millbower

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This article resports on an effective teaching project where teachers provide stuednts with smart phones for use in class.

In a previous article entitled Please use your PDAS and iPhone in the classroom, this Examiner reported on a school system that was using cell phones instead of making the students turn them off. The Wiregrass Ranch High School in Pasco County, Florida, had reported great success with this initiative.

Further evidence of the success of this idea is reported in the November, 2009 issue of Fast Company. Elizabeth Svoboda, in an article Cellphonometry, reports on the experience of Southwest High School in Jacksonville, North Carolina.

The school system, in a project called K-Nect and funded by Qualcomm, has actually issued smart phone equipment to the students for use during their class time.

The phones’ capabilities, including touch screen, digital video recording, and instant messaging, allow students to research, make videos, and report their results to other students.

The idea was the brain child of Shawn Gross, project manager at the education-technology firm Digital Millennial Consulting. He explained, “We conducted a series of focus groups. … The one common element was that the students indicated that they wanted to be connected. They wanted to take advantage of a mobile device like a cell phone that would give them a support network. … they wanted a phone.”

Gross acquired funding from Qualcomm in 2007. Working with Drexel University, Florida State University, and ChoiceSolutions, he developed a math curriculum for mobile phones. When the project was launched in 2008, the students responded immediately.

According to Suzette Kliewer, Southwest High School teacher, the curriculum engaged her normally reluctant students. “The kids are able to explain the material, and when they can do that, that’s when they really get it.”

The final proof may come from the students themselves. One student in particular went from a “C” average to an A+ in math.

The report appears in the Fast Company, November 2009 issue.

Lenn Millbower, the Learnertainment® Trainer helps trainers, teachers, and speakers keep their learners awake so the learning can take through one-on-one coaching, keynotes and seminars, open enrollment workshops, instructional design consulting, and his published works.