The Ten Building Blocks for Learning with Cell Phones

The following is a collection of ideas each teacher implemented to successfully break and/or work within the ban where they teach in an effort to empower students with the freedom to use their cell phones as personal learning devices.

The Ten Building Blocks for Learning with Cell Phones

1) Build Relationships Breaking the ban starts with the building of relationships with key constituents. Here is advice on how to get started.

• with self:
• Realize that leadership begins with example. There are those who are threatened by transitions and change. To break the ban, you will need to present yourself in ways that do not make your colleagues uncomfortable about their instructional methodology.
• with students:
• Let students know you care about making learning fun and relevant and ask them if they’d like the option to be able to do work using their cell phones. Most likely, the answer will be YES! If they are interested provide them with homework options that enable them to use cell phones.
• with parents and guardians:

• Start with the parents by using the cell phone as a tool to bridge the home-school connection. You can have a “Text-of-the-Day” to update parents on what’s happening in the class. You can text parents individually to share information about their child. You can poll parents with Poll Everywhere to get their input and show their opinions matter. 

• with colleagues:

Try to establish yourself as an innovative leader when it comes to empowering students and teachers with technology. A focus on student centered learning is key. At grade or subject meetings, offer to support teachers in harnessing the power of cell phones for themselves, and if they’re ready, with their students. Get them started and model for them. Perhaps have a polling question in a meeting or gather input with a Wiffiti board.
• with administration:
• Start by working within the system to bring about technological change. Become known as someone that works with what your school has on hand and is flexible to administrative needs. When the opportunity presents itself, respectfully present the need for change and recommendations to update your school’s technological teaching processes.
• with district:
• Become known as a tech leader. Offer to participate in school and district-wide technology decisions. Offer to collaborate with the district technology coordinator and others to help establish a new acceptable use policy (AUP) that will allow the use of cell phones as a learning tool. (The AUP is a critical step toward technological change, many districts are still working with AUP’s developed in the late nineties.) Keep in mind that in most cases, what is acceptable in the physical world applies to the online world as well.

2) Embrace Researching today’s educational climate providing evidence that the work you are doing is aligned to research and standards is crucial

3) Plan Activities

• Planning is key. Create and develop a plan, lessons, and activities that you can share with those who care and want to know what you have in store for the use of cell phones in the classroom.

• Develop a well thought-out plan for embedding cell phones into instruction. Invite your students to partner with you in developing ideas to meet learning goals using cell phones. This plan can be shared on your class and/or school website as well as distributed to parents, guardians, and school community members.
•  4) Pilot Program Be willing to start small, demonstrate success and work from there.
• Meet with those key in your school and district decision making to map out an acceptable pilot program i.e. district technology coordinator, building principal and assistant principals. 
• 5) Access for All Anyone interested in embedding cell phones into the curriculum has heard the argument, but what about the students who don’t have a phone??? Well, you do the same thing as you do when your class doesn’t have enough textbooks. You don’t say, I guess we can’t do our work. We find workarounds. Partner or group students. Have some extras on hand for those who don’t have. Reach out to the community for support, but don’t use that as an excuse to not innovate instruction. 
• 6) Partnering with Students to Use Cells for Learning When using technology for learning, Marc Penske’s concept of partnering with students fits in well. Bring students into the conversation and ask them about ways they can meet learning goals in life, at school, and at home.                                                                                                                             
  7) Parent/Guardian Permission Before we use cells with students, we must have parent approval. By the time you ask for it, you’ve hopefully already begun some home school connection strategies with cell phones so you are on your way.

8) Acceptable use Just like any other classroom tool, teachers need to work with students to establish acceptable use policies. In some classrooms the teacher just explains how the general policies apply to the use of cell phones, in others they create a new policy, in some schools the students help create the policies, and in some classrooms they invite parental input as well. Collecting everyone’s thoughts on acceptable use is easy when you use cell phone tools like Poll Everywhere and Wiffiti to do so. 

9) Cell Phone Etiquette
Adults often complain that cell phones are a distraction in class, but how much time have they really devoted to discussing proper etiquette? This can be woven into a general discussion around behavior and etiquette in different situations. Inviting students into the conversation about appropriate etiquette and what to say to those not exhibiting polite behavior usually works better than telling students how to best behave.