The Innovative Educator wrote a post titled "5 Steps to Harnessing the Power of Cells in Education Today." Below is a copy of the 5 Steps with an explanation. Follow this
link to read the complete article. The post lists ways to carry out each on of the 5 suggestions.
Step One: Teacher Use of Cell Phones for Professional Purposes
Remember, just because some schools and districts ban students from using cell phones, this does not apply to teachers. Begin harnessing the power of your own cell phone today as an instructional tool.
Step Two: Teacher Models Appropriate Use for Learning
Once you're comfortable using your cell phone as an instructional tool, you can begin modeling best practice and instructional use of cell phones to your students. Let them see ways they might consider using their phones to support instruction.
Step Three: Strengthen the Home-School Connection with Cell Phones
Cell phones provide a terrific means for connecting with student's parents, family, and guardians. Begin using phones to develop and strengthen those relationships. This provides a foundation and helps develop understanding around the benefits and value of cell phone use in general and later for use with students. The first thing you want to do is get a list of phone numbers from your student's parents, guardians, and/or family members. Once you do that there are many ways to use cells to support the home school connection.
Step Four: Students Use Cell Phones for Homework
Before using cell phones in your classroom with students, begin giving students the option to use cell phones to complete their homework. This gives the teacher the opportunity to allow students to use cell phones for learning without classroom management concerns. This also gives students experience in using cell phones for learning. In most cases students can do the same work on a cell that they can on a laptop so if they have easier access to one over the other at different times they can choose what works best for them on that particular evening. Especially in families with limited technology resources, providing these sorts of options helps break down the digital divide. Suddenly the amount of technology available to a student for learning has increased dramatically.
Step Five: Students Use Cell Phones for Classwork
Once you, your students, and their parents/guardians/families have become comfortable using cell phones as instructional tool and if your school or district empowers classroom teachers to make instructional decisions, you are ready to begin allowing students to harness the power of cell phones for learning. The first thing you'll want to do, even if your district or school has a policy is discuss acceptable use with students. Using a tool like Wiffiti or Polleverywhere may be a smart way to capture student ideas on acceptable use. You can have them contribute outside of school and once all students agree to the ideas shared they can sign a contract with a link to the resource containing the policies to which they developed and agreed. In many cases you'll find student rules and consequences are more stringent then those outlined in the school or district policy, but it's written in language everyone can understand. The results can be posted on the classroom or school website as well.
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