Using Cell Phones in the Class

A trend that could result in overall greater student engagement is the intentional use of cell phones in the classroom. At the all-day active learning conference held on campus today, Lawrence Lawson presented a strategy of having students access Socrative via their smart phones for several kinds of just-in-time icebreakers, comprehension checks, student contributions, error corrections, "exit tickets," responses to a discussion prompt, and whole-class interactions. Incidentally, he shared how he now allows a one-minute tech break in his classes where his students can text their friends, check their FB pages, etc., but he would add a twist. He would provide his students with this sentence starter: I am learning that... The students are asked to text or post their complete sentence.

Another presenter, Kelly Faclcone, a professor of health and kinesiology at Palomar, also taps into the psyche of today's students by utilizing their smart phones or tablets. Her student groups access assigned slides that she has created using Google drive and complete whatever tasks they are asked to do right on their slides, for an instantaneous and visible interaction. Click here for an example of such a collaboration design.

Perhaps, the most readily adaptable cell phone use came from another ESL faculty presenter Katrina Tamura. She got the participants all excited by demonstrating how students can just pull out their cell phones and record each other on the camera while doing guided interviews designed to improve their real-word English abilities. Her students then viewed their own clips to make improvements as well as validate their ability to speak. Step by step, the students graduated to interviewing community members and eventually ended up making a class movie out of the best videos selected by the students themselves. As innovative as Katrina's idea of a spoken journal on camera is her use of the voice recording capability on cell phone. She would have her students record her read a story, then assign them the listening homework for just one minute a day for seven days, and eventually have them record themselves reading the same story with  noticeably improved enunciation.

So cell phones in the classroom are no longer trouble makers; rather, they can be the difference-makers, if used creatively.