Saturday, July 19, 2014

Mid-Saturday's Lament on the Addiction of Cell Phones

Where the heck would I be without my cell phone?!  
                  
            What time is it?  How do I walk 2 blocks to the right, and 3 blocks forward without a cell phone?  How do I tell Rachel I might be late to her party?  What room is my EDUC 504 class in today?  What time is the bus picking us up?  How much is a laptop?  Are there any apartments available?  How much will a cab be?  What is Kimberly posting in the Facebook group?  Did someone post something good in Instagram?  Is there anything new and funny on I-funny?  Did I get more e-mail?  What time should I set my alarm to be?  How many alarms should I set? Is my Spotify working?  Does Ke$ha have a new song?  Why do I have a lot of Beyonce songs in my playlist?  I wonder if the new episode of the Real Housewives of New Jersey is up?  How much money is in my bank account?  Who is going out tonight?  Who is going out tomorrow?  Who wants to go out at 3 AM on February 30, 2014?   Why are there so many questions?  Where the heck would I be without my cellphone?!

               I do not know if anyone of the Secondary MAC'ers are addicted to using their cell phone or may have asked themselves one of the many questions (above) I ask myself on a daily basis.  But if you are addicted or ask those many questions that you rely on your phone to answer, I'm right there with you.  I know, and have seen, a large majority of people in my life who are constantly inseparable from their phone.  I definitely fall under this category.  I'm doing it right now as I type this post!  
              
             I grew up just as cell phones were becoming popular.  My first cell phone was a pre-paid Kyocera 2325 (seen below).  I paid for it with the money I earned working in a bakery.  My parents refused to enable the my siblings to have a cell phones and the ability to talk on the phone (texting was NOT big when I was 15).  My parents acted in this way because they first purchased my older sister a cell phone and she ran the bill way up (as in accrued a large amount of charges).  I decided that I wanted to be cool and get a phone (without having a bank account), so I worked hard and purchased a pre-paid phone.  For those of you who do not know how a pre-paid phone works, it's actually pretty nifty; you purchase these cards that have a quantified amount of minutes and you input a code into your phone and voila you have minutes that expire in a year unless you use them!  I'm thinking about going back to this soon.

              
              This week I attemped to NOT use my phone as much as I usually do.  In volunteering at Scarlett and trying to role model, I found it easy to focus and make sure my cell phone was either off or on airplane mode at the start of the day at 7:30 AM.  But the moment the day was over at approximately 1:30 PM, I was all over my phone.  It really made me think though.  If I could barely contain myself for 6 hours, how do I expect my future students to do the same?  Over the next couple of weeks I am going to challenge myself to stay away from my cellphone and other distracting technologies.  In doing this I hope to devise some strategies for my future students.  I know in discussing the BYOD article, my biggest concern was the distraction measures of students bringing their own devices.  I think the best thing I can do is relate to my students and not be hypocritically harsh.  As a future educator, I would like to challenge myself to make my class so interesting that the distractions will be unnecessary.  That or I can allow "text message breaks" so students can slowly ween themselves off of texting/media during class and even maybe trust my judgement in such.  I'll report back more later on the status of my challenge!
          

7 comments:

  1. Good luck with working on your cell phone addiction Anthony! I only got a SmartPhone two months ago, so I don't really have the same perspective that you do. Therefore, it was great for me to read your post, as my students will most likely have similar attachments to their own phones. That being said, I agree that a big concern for teachers with the BYOD movement will be distractions/students not so surreptitiously not staying on task. Another more prominent concern in my mind is the lack of equity and differences in SES that may become more prominent if BYOD were to be a classroom requirement. My old dumb phone was only 12 dollars a month on the family plan, which I can definitely say I sorely miss. This is, however, also school district dependent; in some schools, literally everyone has a SmartPhone by high school. Perhaps as teachers, if we did need students to bring their phones, we could send out a questionnaire beforehand in order to test the waters as to who has what.

    As a whole though, I don't find phone use in the classroom to be necessary. Even as a world language teacher where dictionary access that easy would be awesome, I would keep the old school dictionaries instead. The more work students have to put into figuring out the information, the more likely they will be to remember it.

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  2. Kelsey, you bring up an excellent point with the uselessness of phone use. And I just had to comment on your "..more work students have to put into figuring out the information, the more likely they will be to remember it." I remember when I took College Spanish, and we would read spanish novels and excerpts, I used to go to www.freetranslation.com and literally type in sentences and paragraphs to try to understand them. Although this was a quick fix in the moment, in the long term it did nothing for me. It was difficult to speak Spanish to other people who fluently spoke it because I literally did not practice what I preached. Another terrible thing I did with www.freetranslation.com was try to write my English sentences into Spanish. This was terrible because the translator would be totally unreliable and I would try to translate every literal world. Both of these quick fixes did not help me learn Spanish and it wasn't until I took the time to understand the words and come up with my own representations of the sentences, instead of literal translations, that I kind of started to understand Spanish. So I totally agree with your no phone use. Bring back the old school dictionary!

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  3. Hey Anthony, I totally agree; I had a Blackberry-type phone before I switched to an iPhone two years ago, and now I'm wondering how I could have not had email and internet on my phone before. That being said, I admit I sneak in a check-for-new-texts move now and then at Scarlett, but have to do it when I know that nobody is looking because I might get in trouble.

    I had a problem with students using phones in class last summer when I was volunteering at Huron High School. It was a math class, so it wasn't like they could use their phones to search the answer online. But once they were done with the problem, people instantly whipped out their phones. I never confiscated any, but made it clear to them that it was ok to text IF they were done with their work, and that I shouldn't hear their conversations from across the room. For the most part this worked pretty well.

    I wonder though, if you also think the rise of smartphone use has made us more antisocial, especially since I think education is collaborative effort. I definitely do it when I'm feeling self-conscious, or when I'm bored, or when I'm in a room full of people I don't like and I want to look occupied. I just feel like there's less face-to-face convos these days as we text and iMessage more...

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    1. Melission you bring up an excellent point! Cell phones have definitely aided in our "anti-social-ness." I have been there when things get awkward and you whip out your phone to look preoccupied. I find it more out of habit versus when I'm bored, to pull out my phone and play with it. In this program there are ALWAYS more important things to do, but I have like a pavlovian response to when I see my phone, I touch it. How about we work together to become less dependent on our phones?! Let's be social again! Haha Thanks for the amazing comment!

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  4. Anthony, you pose a lot of interesting options for dealing with cell phones in the classroom. I have owned cell phones since I was 16, but I have had the opposite in which I had to consciously and intentionally check my phone, and part of it could be due to having lived in a lot of areas where cell phone service is limited or non-existent. I bring this up because as I have slowly increased my checking my cell phone, I believe your suggestion of text breaks and incrementally decreasing is possible, but still respectful of recognizing their interests and needs.

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  5. Anthony, I do not believe that I have a cell phone addiction when I compare myself to you. At least, not when I am in school. When I head off to work at Scarlett, I put my phone in my backpack and I usually don't even remember I own one until I get back to my apartment and need to ask someone a question. At this point, I will look around for my phone and realize that I have not taken it out of my backpack yet. While I do find cell phones very helpful in life, I do not think they are as helpful in class. Usually, if I am on my phone it is to talk to a friend or family member (text or phone call), go on some sort of social media website or to play a game. Out of these options, I think the only acceptable behavior for a classroom would be to talk to a family member. I understand how parents may be too overbearing and want to know where you are or other facts about your life. Now I'm not saying that students couldn't find an acceptable use for a cell phone in class, but I do believe that 90% of the time when a student is on their phone they are being distracted by things that could and should wait. So while I do think I will take more of a laid back approach to cell phones, I plan to stress first day that I expect cell phone usage to be for what I consider important reasons.

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  6. Mr. T,

    First off, I greatly enjoy reading your posts. As I've told you in person, your "voice" and writing style is uniquely your own, and it is excellent. But more specifically to the content of your post, I also share your concern regarding the level of distraction that BYOD would provide for students in the classroom. Additionally, I am skeptical as to whether or not the benefits the BYOD provides to learning in the classroom outweigh the potential negative consequences of BYOD, namely the increased distraction that would likely decrease learning. One of my previous professors did not allow laptops in the classroom as he believed they impeded learning and active listening, and I believe he was right. I actually enjoyed not having a laptop in his class. I felt that I was more engaged and gleaned more from class than I would have if I had my laptop open. The same may be said for cell phones.

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