Cellphones and other electronic devices, once
banished to school lockers, are becoming part of classroom lessons in some area
school districts.
From
pop quizzes through text-messaging to lab results loaded onto electronic
tablets to looking up information on smart phones, teachers are finding ways to
engage students with the latest devices.
"Technology
is part of kids' lives. It's here to stay," said Superintendent Robert
Scott of Avon Lake, a district in its fifth year of building its wireless
network.
In
January, Avon Lake High School launched
an initiative called BYOD -- Bring Your Own Device.
"Students
are allowed to use their wireless devises anywhere in the building," Scott
said. "Cellphones, smart phones, iPods, iPads are all considered a
resource and are used at a teacher's discretion."
Physics
teacher Michelle Gould Burgess, who like many instructors had already been
using the school's website to post podcasts of lectures, homework assignments
and more, lost no time in integrating students' personal devices into daily
lessons.
During
a recent physics experiment, Mark Ketterer, 17, entered data on his iPad as one
of his three lab partners used a probe to measure the voltage of an electronic
field in a pan of water. Another student took notes on her Kindle Fire as the
students shared observations.
All the
data was being stored in an electronic cloud through Google Docs, Mark
explained, and would be available to the four lab partners to access on their
personal computers for use when writing their individual reports.
"It's
much quicker than paper and you have everything right there waiting for
you," Mark said.
Across
the room, student George Quinn, 16, was using a stylist pen on his iPad to
sketch and write lab observations. "It's all wireless," he said.
"You don't have to mess around with cables or hooking things up."
Burgess
said achievement has increased with the addition of technology, which has made
it easier for students to record and graph information. "I'm devoting more
time to teaching kids how to analyze the data," she said.
Students
who don't have their own devices can use school computers or borrow one of the
30 iPads the district bought with a grant, Scott said.
To
guard against any abuse, students and their parents have to sign a digital
driver's license before accessing the school's wireless system. The district
has the ability to track when individual students sign onto the system, said
Scott Wuensch, the technology director. Firewalls are in place to block access
to inappropriate sites.
Avon
Lake will extend BYOD to students in grades five through eight in
August when network expansion is complete.
At Shaker Heights Middle School, teacher Jeremy Bishko walks
around the room of his seventh-grade science class holding an iPad. The
information he enters into the hand-held device streams to the electronic white
board in the front of the room visible to all of the students. His back is
never to the class.
"I
can roam the classroom, stay closer to the kids, check their work and answer
any question right on the spot. It keeps the students more engaged because I'm
right there," Bishko said.
And for
those who can't seem to remember their homework, Bishko posts a QR symbol
(quick-response code) outside his door each day so students can use their smart
phones to scan in the assignment. "They always have their cellphones
handy," he said.
Meanwhile,
Shaker Middle School Spanish teacher Ellen Roberts figured out a way to use
text messaging to boost her students' vocabulary retention. It was part of a
research project she conducted while earning her master's degree.
"Vocabulary
-- between 450 to 500 words -- is a big chunk of what students learn in the
first year," Roberts said. "For students to have an 80 percent
retention of new vocabulary words, they need about 20 exposures. My thinking
was, what can I do to get the number of exposures up?"
She had
two groups of students -- one that received the text messages and one that did
not. By giving vocabulary pop quizzes in class the next day, Roberts was able
to compare the results of the group who received the text messages and the
group that did not.
Roberts
sent a text message with one Spanish word to the students asking them to text
the translation back to her.
"Retention
went up to 31 percent greater frequency of remembering the word on the
quiz," she said. "Students had to think about the word, look it up
and physically type it back into the phone and push send."
Because
students' privacy and security is always a concern, Roberts explained, teachers
generally use websites such as classparrot.com for text-messaging activities.
Interested
students and their parents sign up through the website. Teachers going on the
site via computer see the names or the class designation, not the phone
numbers, when sending out the information.
Although
electronic devices are among many tools used in the classroom, Roberts said
they can make teaching more dynamic.
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