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France bans smartphone use in schools

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Re: France bans smartphone use in schools

#91

Post by privacypoller »

skate22 wrote: post #61
Pulcinella wrote: post #43

My thoughts as a High School teacher: I have tried[1] to allow students to have their phones, teach them to use their phones responsibly, etc. It doesn’t work. They are banned in my class. I’m just a single teacher with basically no budget. I can’t compete with giant corporations that spend millions on design, UX, UI, etc. [1] Also, technically trying to teach kids to use their phones responsibly (or even generically…

In college if i was goofing off on my phone during lecture I would likely pay for it on an exam. You could try silently writing down which days you saw a student on their phone & which days you taught the specific subject material. Then when students get it wrong on a test that you grade you can add a comment along the lines of "this was covered on day X when you were on your phone" You would also then have a nice re…

this is the same problem with photo radar speeding tickets. We know that for learning immediate correction is super-important, so just like getting a ticket in the mail several weeks after speeding, a note after you fail a test will just piss off the receiver and there's no long term training effect.

also, don't you think teachers have better things to do with their extremely limited instruction time than police and inventory cell phone usage?

Re: France bans smartphone use in schools

#92

Post by michaelmrose »

chpmrc wrote: post #31
EliRivers wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Smartphones and tablets are GREAT learning devices. My experience is certainly the opposite. I do all my best learning without smartphones and without tablets.

You prefer other devices, not everyone does. Most people nowadays own a smartphone but not a laptop. And books are arguably less engaging than apps for a generation that grew up not reading them (hard to swallow, since I'm an avid reader, but it's true).

The idea that you think smartphones are an apt replacement for books and laptops indicates a failure to evaluate both.

Re: France bans smartphone use in schools

#93

Post by paulddraper »

skate22 wrote: post #61
Pulcinella wrote: post #43

My thoughts as a High School teacher: I have tried[1] to allow students to have their phones, teach them to use their phones responsibly, etc. It doesn’t work. They are banned in my class. I’m just a single teacher with basically no budget. I can’t compete with giant corporations that spend millions on design, UX, UI, etc. [1] Also, technically trying to teach kids to use their phones responsibly (or even generically…

In college if i was goofing off on my phone during lecture I would likely pay for it on an exam. You could try silently writing down which days you saw a student on their phone & which days you taught the specific subject material. Then when students get it wrong on a test that you grade you can add a comment along the lines of "this was covered on day X when you were on your phone" You would also then have a nice re…

> the parents can do the enforcing

Why should the parents do the enforcing?

If I goof off and get bad grades I would likely pay for it in my future career opportunities.

/s

Re: France bans smartphone use in schools

#94

Post by privacypoller »

noobermin wrote: post #90

I will be supportive of this when adults decide to ban cellphones in cars when in the driver's seat. Studies show driver's even with handless systems are significantly more likely to get into car crashes. If you support curtailing young people's cell phone use but don't support curtailing the use by adults which has proven to lead to traffic fatalities I'd have to ask you why.

First regular cell phone use is already banned in a lot of places, and everywhere has a general distracted driving law on the books. It's pretty tough to surf facebook or instagram hands-free.

Second, your essentially saying I'll support a ban that students don't like when drivers stop putting everyone a risk on our roads - why the linkage? You could support both today, or either independently. This sort of linear-justification derails a lot of necessary change with artificial preconditions.

Re: France bans smartphone use in schools

#95

Post by privacypoller »

Daishiman wrote: post #86
weliketocode wrote: post #51

Like much of education policy, this seems to help some at the expense of harming others. For the intelligent & motivated, there will be unnecessary boredom during downtime/study hall, potential hatred for learning/school, and other negative effects. For the lackluster students, this policy will help some pay attention to class, learn lessons, and complete work. In general, however, I'd have to say I'm against it. Any…

> For the intelligent & motivated, there will be unnecessary boredom during downtime/study hall, potential hatred for learning/school, and other negative effects. Boredom is a fact of life, and learning to accept it without forcing yourself to depend on a smartphone is an underrated skill. > Any widespread banning of freedoms or ignorance of new technologies will have outsized negative consequences. This argument doe…

absolutely - teaching my kids how to entertain themselves for a couple of hours has been one of the major challenges in raising them. A combination of parents scheduling the entire life of a kid and always-available media has made it very hard for a tween to just "find something to do" for an afternoon.

Re: France bans smartphone use in schools

#96

Post by privacypoller »

chpmrc wrote: post #32
MaxBarraclough wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Smartphones and tablets are GREAT learning devices. {{Citation needed}} I believe studies have shown that gadgets do more harm than good in school environments. > If we keep blaming the ineptitude of teachers on devices the quality of education will never progress. Even if smartphones really are a hindrance?

Tools are never a hindrance. Their misuse is. And I don't need a citation since those are just tools for consuming content and the "learning" part depends on the content, not on the tool. Try playing Math workout and tell me if you're not learning arithmetic a lot faster than with any other traditional "exercise".

"guns don't kill people; people kill people"

"Hey kids what are you going to do with your screen time today? daily endless-runner challenge? collect gems for virtual powerups? or Math Workout?"

Re: France bans smartphone use in schools

#97

Post by wild_preference »

test6554 wrote: post #42
WorkLifeBalance wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need to read the news every day, let alone every hour of the day. It's an addiction to the way news is currently produced. It's entirely reasonable to spend an evening a week reading up on tech news. It's not reasonable to have a compulsion to check the news whenever you have a down minute. I'm guilty of that myself, I'm currently writing this while a program compiles but I wouldn't wish this on a developin…

The older I get the more I realize that just because something is good for the average person doesn't mean it should be the law for everyone. There are billions of ways to go through life, and sometimes the freedom to make and learn from mistakes is just as important as a formal education.

I’m arriving at the opposite conclusion as I age. Exceptional people are so rare that it seems to make more logistical sense to ignore them and let them bend the rules themselves. Kind of like a browser leaving advanced features to power users.

For example, the vast majority of kids in school are using their smartphones to do stuff like watch Ninja play Fortnite on Twitch, not whatever self-enriching bullshit we can point out they could be doing.

Also, when I was a kid, there was no greater injustice than my parents kicking me off the computer to go outside. Ugh, don’t they know how productive I’m being?! But boy do I understand as an adult. What better time to learn how to entertain yourself without a computer screen than in school?

Re: France bans smartphone use in schools

#98

Post by TeMPOraL »

vorpalhex wrote: post #73
TeMPOraL wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As someone who votes, you should read the news on a very regular basis. Ideally that means reading a variety of news sources from a variety of political leanings. Why? To poison your mind with lies and misrepresentations of reality? To get distracted from important issues and spend lots of time following irrelevant dramas? Mainstream news has negative informational value these days.

Obviously you have the special truth from the only true source, and all news media is fake except for the ones who hawk gold pills and testosterone boosters - they know how it really is.

I don't have any special truth from a true source; I just believe that a typical news story is mostly misinformation intended to drive pageviews instead of presenting accurate picture of reality. I don't think adding more false information helps get a more true picture. I mean, you could try to tease out some true information by "averaging" news from multiple distinct sources, but that's pretty much a full-time job, and most news are just a waste of time.

(I mean, seriously. Doesn't everyone here know of Gell-Mann amnesia? Or are people just afraid to follow it to its logical conclusion?)

Re: France bans smartphone use in schools

#100

Post by themihai »

cube2222 wrote: post #56

My thought as a University student and only a year ago - high school student: Phones are a really great learning aid. There are also people who prefer to listen and participate more actively in lessons instead of writing down everything written on the whiteboard, with a smartphone they can just take a picture of the whiteboard. Smartphones are the smallest thesaurus and translator you can get. Smartphones can graph o…

Something tells me that less than 1 percent use the phone like that. Most of them would text, watching various social media crap with nothing related to the class. To use them effectively the teacher should be able to put all the phones in a "class" mode with restricted apps and content.
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