Cell Phone Porn
Liz Kolb (From Toy to Tool:Cell Phones in Learning blog) is my hero on using “Cell Phones as Classroom Learning Tools.” I was amazed at her K12 Online Conference 2007 presentation.
This presentation focuses on ways to connect students’ favorite digital toy with classroom learning. Cell phones have the capability to become the “Swiss army knife” for student research and organization. First, we explore using cell phones as data collection tools: audio recorders, digital cameras, and digital camcorders. Additionally, we consider how classroom projects can be developed for cell phones: creating ring tones, text messaging, mobile WebPages, and mobile surveys. Finally, we contemplate the future features of cell phones and how those features play a role in learning.
To be completely up front, I have my doubts about cell phones in schools as they exist now. Yet, it was Liz’ name that came to mind almost immediately when my supervisor—with whom I’ve been having offline conversations about certain blog entries and yes, I already encouraged her to start her own blog using Edublogs.org—sent me this link, Cell Phone Porn Scandal hits U.S. School.
One of the points I was sharing with my supervisor is that schools are merely ignoring what is happening OUTSIDE of school by banning/blocking/prohibiting. We’re missing some awesome “digital citizenship” teachable moments, aren’t we? Our children have to walk alone now. Her argument is, “Why can’t the parents or guardians teach them this? Why schools?” Liz writes in a comment at her K12 Online Conference presentation:
My experience with using cell phones is that since it is a tool that 90% of students already own and are already “engaged” with using and enjoy using in their everyday social lives, than maybe by using this tool to help students collect data for homework or create a digital storybook is a way to get disengaged students interested in curriculum-based activities, than I believe it is worth exploring.
I do not claim that cell phones are better than other digital or non-digital technologies for helping students meet district/state standards, but I do believe that students’ everyday technology tools are disconnected from their school technology tool learning. This often creates barriers between what students are using/learning in schools with technology tools and what they are doing in their everyday lives outside of school.
Again, we devalue what we don’t recognize as important in students’ lives…being connected is one of those valuable points. Yet, should we recognize it? Kim Cofino tweets:
It’s an opportunity to talk honestly with kids about why this behavior is so common place. What makes this acceptable 2 them? Some really obscene student behavior has been underground for so long. To me, good to have it in the open. What’s really happening?
But is it good to have this behavior in the open? From a teacher perspective, perhaps, it is. This is a teachable moment. From a school district perspective, the media coverage could be disastrous. Consider that the superintendent and principal in the Cell Phone Porn did the following when approached by the media…
Phone messages left Thursday for the principal and superintendent were not returned, and a reporter was turned away from both the high school and the district office.
Who gets the blame in a situation like this? Schools for failing to teach appropriate behavior with new technologies, parents for providing technologies without oversight or instructions, children for exploring their sexuality in ways that enable others to make the journey with them (sounds almost positive when worded that way)?
Police tried to stop the spread of pornographic video and photos of two U.S. high school girls, images that were transmitted by cell phone to dozens of the girls’ classmates and then to the wider world. At least 40 Parkland High School students believed to have received the images must show their phones to police by Tuesday to ensure the images have been erased, or they could be prosecuted in juvenile court for possession of child pornography, District Attorney James B. Martin said Thursday. But students at the Pennsylvania school said the distribution was far more widespread.
It’s ludicrous, ridiculous that the police are trying to stop the spread of the pornographic video and photos. Who can hope to accomplish that in our increasingly connected world? What would you do if you didn’t have any obstacles to teaching with technology, seizing teachable moments because students COULD use mobile phones? What answers would you give school district lawyers and top administrators about teachable moments that could hurt people?
In the meantime, I like Clarence’s (Remote Access) approach:
We used to give kids textbooks and tell them the content was valuable and could be trusted. Instead, we now direct the to the web, to library books, to videos, email contacts, twitter streams, etc. etc. But we need to do all we can to help them become their own filters and information managers. They need the skills to separate the signal from the noise and find the pieces that are valuable for them. They need to become responsible for, and take charge of, the quality of the information they are accessing and using.
This does not mean that we dump them online and leave them to the wolves. It means we teach, we model, we discuss and we learn along with them. We show them the value of having independent information access skills and model the metacognitive processes needed to relentlessly control their access and their needs.
Simply, seize, rather than ban, those online teachable moments when they present themselves.
