Today during a Math lesson on Surface Area and Volume:
Mr. Truss, I forgot my calculator, can I borrow one?
Do you have your cell phone?
Yes?
Then you have a calculator.
Really? I can use my cell phone?
Really!
Cell phones and mp3 players in the classroom: Not Obstacles but Opportunities
| "Kids are going to text message. How are we going to make that work in our school?" - - - "When someone wants to ban something, I ask myself, how can we use this to help us in education? ‘It is a new tool’. Not obstacles but opportunities." Chris Kennedy |
It is time for us to PAY ATTENTION!
Comments
I've used my cell phone as a calculator lots of times in school, but I always have to explain its function to the teacher when they come over to confiscate it (inevitably). Part of the problem is that a lot of people don't actually know about the other programs on a cell phone - it makes phone calls, and that's good enough for them! It's like people who use Firefox but don't install any extensions or use tabs (such users exist).
Cell phones are like Web 2.0, they're massively useful to those who actively explore all the options and add-ons and know how to use each one - the power users.
I was the 'tech person' among my roommates at a spring break conference in the States solely because I was the only one who had figured out how to work both the radiator and the coffee machine in our hotel room - when our alarm clock died and I pulled out my cell phone in substitute, you could almost hear the unspoken disbelief: "Our cell phones can do that?"
:) It's good to be tech-savvy.
(PS, these are amazing: http://www.lifehacker.com/search/cell%20phone/all/ )I love this quote:
"When someone wants to ban something, I ask myself,