Response to an Open Letter to Educators

I agree with Dan Brown that educational institutions need adapt to the information age for them to succeed and for our citizens to succeed. Technology has enabled us to seek out most information that we need or want to know and thus, making fact memorizing useless. Fact memorizing is not deep thinking or learning, it is purely superficial. I forget all the “facts” I memorized for x test right after I take it, and have learned nothing. I think that the “signals” of our knowledge need to change. For example, a resume is the format that we use to see if one is qualified for x job. That resume is a signal that we have learned or are capable of doing something that is needed in our society. I could be the best chef in the world, but because I didn’t go to culinary school, I most likely won’t even get an interview because my resume says so.

I would be interested in exploring and implementing how educators could use cell phones in the classroom as a useful tool for learning, specifically Student Response Systems. Some examples of this tool are receiving answers instantly from students, taking attendance, and creating a community by sharing opinions. Sites such as www.polleverywhere.com track answers from students instantly and send the results to the teacher. Another site http://wiffiti.com allows students to instantly text in their opinions. I found an educational article that addresses how Student Response Systems in the classroom cater to our technological world and how adopting them creates many benefits and few considerations:  http://people.uncw.edu/lowery/SWSSA%20ms.pdf. An article from Cornell University simply lays out the benefits of incorporating technology into the classroom. The article focuses on SRS, how to integrate it into the classroom, and why it’s important. http://www.cte.cornell.edu/teaching-ideas/teaching-with-technology/classroom-response-systems.html. This past July, an article was published by the courier-journal about Jefferson County Public Schools thinking about using cell phones in the classroom to improve education, learning, and how they are going to try to adopt the tool: http://www.courier-journal.com/article/20130728/NEWS0105/307290010/JCPS-schools-can-apply-allow-cellphone-use-classrooms.

There are many possible barriers that could be encountered by allowing students to use cell phones in the classroom as an education tool. The three most immediate issues are that (1) cell phones could be abused during class time for personal use, (2) students could sign on another and (3) students could cheat by using other student’s phones to answer questions. To implement cell phones into the classroom in an educational manner we would need to be a program that allows students cell phones to sync upon entry into the classroom and allow the teacher to monitor their work via tablet. This however poses another barrier, which is that many students may not be willing to expose the personal information necessary to have their phones synced. I think my role in this would be to get the word out about using cell phones as educational tools, to promote the websites I listed above to engage students in learning, and get as many people on board as possible.

-Amanda