When I was in highschool (late 10s) you were allowed to have your phone on you in class, it wasn’t instantly taken away if they saw the outline in your pocket, but you weren’t allowed to use it in class.
In one of my class to become an high school teacher, we were thought about some best practices for learning and studying on your own.
Just the fact that you can see your phone (not the screen, just the body) is actively harming your ability to learn. It’s because phone are machines to notify you and just seeing, or even feeling it in your pocket, unconsciously makes you alert to its notifications.
The professor after that went on to say that, if you’re going to use a laptop, use it to actually take note, nothing else. Since the screen is so big, lots of people can see it, and scrolling through Facebook (or other) impacts your ability to listen (duh, you’re doing something else), but also to the others, because it take the attention away from the class, to the screen of the laptop, even if it isn’t your laptop. So even Uni student might have to think about how they use their devices…
The best thing about that class was that everything was back with studies! So this isn’t just the teacher saying “screw technology!”, but actual science!
I had an English teacher in 2015 who also based her cell phone rules around science too. It was “phones are allowed, but use them respectfully” on the basis that you are more likely to be focused if you have access to your technology and can quickly check a notification and then put it away. She said you are more distracted by a notification when you don’t know what it is, so we were always allowed to pull our phones out and check what was happening. Funnily enough, this freedom and mutual respect caused there to be minimal phone use in that classroom.
I have no doubt that it can improve the class dynamic! Trust is always a good thing to have a good respect relation between a teacher and students!
And I agree that having a notification and not being allowed to look at it is not useful, if I remember the study actually showed that. But what is definitely better is not being notified at all. To test that, they asked every student to leave the phone in the hallway, so in another room. I’m not talking about the feasibility (risk of theft and other things), but there is a clear impact.
And I was in HS at the same time as you, but honestly, the class dynamic today is way different than it used to be even less then 10 years ago. It surprised me during my internship! I actually had the same policy as your teacher (you can use your phone, respectfully), but clearly I didn’t master it… 😅
As an adult with mild ADHD I can admit that my cellphone poisons productivity. I can imagine not doing so well in school if the same fully fledged dopamine machines existed when I was a kid.
At the same time, I can’t imagine a full ban on cellphones being the reasonable course of action. There’s probably a compromise in there somewhere.
As an adult with strong ADHD, I concur. I lock up my phone and keep it far away when working because it’s kryptonite for my already minimal ability to focus on the task at hand.
But cellphones became common-ish when I was in school, and the rule of the time was “it stays in your locker”. People were wary of theft and would usually bring them in turned off so teachers wouldn’t confiscate them, but it did the job of keeping phones out of hands in class.
I know parents want to have access to their kids 24/7, but that’s such a new mindset and I can’t imagine it does much good for kids’ development, either.
Right? This is going to sound all kids-these-days, but I remember when I was told to leave my personal laptop at home when I tried to use it in a computer class for the express purpose of learning the material in that class.
Yeah; I remember that I had a list of stuff that could be brought to class. Pens, pencils, erasers, official calculator, binder, textbooks. Anything else got binned if it was discovered. Even jackets and hats had to stay in the locker during class.
I assumed cell phones would be banned in classrooms. When I was in school any sight of a walkman would get it taken away!
When I was in highschool (late 10s) you were allowed to have your phone on you in class, it wasn’t instantly taken away if they saw the outline in your pocket, but you weren’t allowed to use it in class.
That seems reasonable.
In one of my class to become an high school teacher, we were thought about some best practices for learning and studying on your own.
Just the fact that you can see your phone (not the screen, just the body) is actively harming your ability to learn. It’s because phone are machines to notify you and just seeing, or even feeling it in your pocket, unconsciously makes you alert to its notifications.
The professor after that went on to say that, if you’re going to use a laptop, use it to actually take note, nothing else. Since the screen is so big, lots of people can see it, and scrolling through Facebook (or other) impacts your ability to listen (duh, you’re doing something else), but also to the others, because it take the attention away from the class, to the screen of the laptop, even if it isn’t your laptop. So even Uni student might have to think about how they use their devices…
The best thing about that class was that everything was back with studies! So this isn’t just the teacher saying “screw technology!”, but actual science!
I had an English teacher in 2015 who also based her cell phone rules around science too. It was “phones are allowed, but use them respectfully” on the basis that you are more likely to be focused if you have access to your technology and can quickly check a notification and then put it away. She said you are more distracted by a notification when you don’t know what it is, so we were always allowed to pull our phones out and check what was happening. Funnily enough, this freedom and mutual respect caused there to be minimal phone use in that classroom.
I have no doubt that it can improve the class dynamic! Trust is always a good thing to have a good respect relation between a teacher and students!
And I agree that having a notification and not being allowed to look at it is not useful, if I remember the study actually showed that. But what is definitely better is not being notified at all. To test that, they asked every student to leave the phone in the hallway, so in another room. I’m not talking about the feasibility (risk of theft and other things), but there is a clear impact.
And I was in HS at the same time as you, but honestly, the class dynamic today is way different than it used to be even less then 10 years ago. It surprised me during my internship! I actually had the same policy as your teacher (you can use your phone, respectfully), but clearly I didn’t master it… 😅
T9 texting without looking at your phone is a lost art.
A large part of me misses the simplicity of those old phones, and for some reason I really do miss T9…
As an adult with mild ADHD I can admit that my cellphone poisons productivity. I can imagine not doing so well in school if the same fully fledged dopamine machines existed when I was a kid.
At the same time, I can’t imagine a full ban on cellphones being the reasonable course of action. There’s probably a compromise in there somewhere.
As an adult with strong ADHD, I concur. I lock up my phone and keep it far away when working because it’s kryptonite for my already minimal ability to focus on the task at hand.
But cellphones became common-ish when I was in school, and the rule of the time was “it stays in your locker”. People were wary of theft and would usually bring them in turned off so teachers wouldn’t confiscate them, but it did the job of keeping phones out of hands in class.
I know parents want to have access to their kids 24/7, but that’s such a new mindset and I can’t imagine it does much good for kids’ development, either.
Right? This is going to sound all kids-these-days, but I remember when I was told to leave my personal laptop at home when I tried to use it in a computer class for the express purpose of learning the material in that class.
Yeah; I remember that I had a list of stuff that could be brought to class. Pens, pencils, erasers, official calculator, binder, textbooks. Anything else got binned if it was discovered. Even jackets and hats had to stay in the locker during class.