Teachers, Help yourself! Using what’s there in the classroom.
Posted by Kira on October 26, 2011
Let’s face it, times are tough now compared to “the old days.” This is not your mother’s teaching career. In my stressed art department, 5 teachers service 1250 high school students with a budget of $0 for three years…we finally got a $4000 order approved after we ran out of black, white, brown, and yellow paint for our drawing & painting classes. Never mind that we teach 650 kids photography with- wait for it- NO cameras. “What?-” you say? Don’t despair- guess what almost every high-school student has? That’s right, a smartphone that’s probably nicer than yours. Smartphones to the rescue.
That phone can be used for lots of things, not just photography- although that is a great bonus. How about taking a video clip? Kids react well to seeing and hearing themselves on video. You could prepare a lesson where they partner-film and then review themselves. They could read, act something out, or mock-teach a concept. In doing so, they will gain fluency with the material in a method that they enjoy. You may actually be able to trick them into learning something.
Research has been recently done stating that if you have kids use their phones as a dictionary in order to look up unfamiliar words, they can spend more time in the text, in a state of comprehension- than if you either let them go (without learning the unfamiliar word) or have them get out a paper dictionary.
I have my students use their phones as recording devices. When they need to remember a password to Quia.com where they take their quizzes, or if they need to remember their partner’s logon to the computer, they take out the phone and record the information for later use. If I want them to complete an assignment for homework, I have them take a photo of it either from my whiteboard or in the book so they remember when they get home. Recently they decided that to kick-off our 2nd quarter unit on European art beginning with Ancient Greece, we would host a breakfast and toga party- out came the phones to write down what everyone is responsible to bring for breakfast. When I then had to spread the word that togas are allowed ONLY inside my classroom and not at school for the rest of the day, the kids said “you better tweet that, Ms. Slye, so the word gets out.” This generation of kids are IN LOVE with their phones- use it to your advantage and you will be a happier person, guaranteed.
Here’s a couple of links to other articles on using phones in the classroom:
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