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Oregon school cell phone ban: 'Engaged students, joyful teachers'

portlandtribune.com

21–30 of 242 posts

Re: Oregon school cell phone ban: 'Engaged students, joyful teachers'

#22
post #2

It's crazy to me that cell phones, and especially smart phones, were ever allowed in the classroom during class.

I suspect it was sneaky.

The old Nokia in school wasn't a problem. You get in trouble for playing snake. The iphone 1 wasn't really a problem. There weren't that many, and it served as a calendar.

But year after year, release after release, the industry deliberately loaded more and more addictive machinery, pushed more and more boundaries, until it's beyond unacceptable.

As an aside, it's amazing how hard it is to turn the modern phone into a no-nonsense tool, and I'm an adult with self-control, a deep understanding of dark patterns, and a fully-functioning brain after 3 cups of coffee.

Re: Oregon school cell phone ban: 'Engaged students, joyful teachers'

#23
My son, who recently graduated high school, went to a school that banned phones but insisted on laptops (providing them for the kids who couldn't afford one). He said it was ridiculous, as none of the kids had any problem using their laptop for anything they would have used the phone, which was mostly texting, scrolling social media, watching videos, and playing games. Even when the school tried to lock down services, as soon as one kid found a way around it, they all did.

Re: Oregon school cell phone ban: 'Engaged students, joyful teachers'

#24

I don't think banning is the right solution to this. At some point, I think we are going to have comms devices imbedded in our heads and whatnot. I think the right approach is finding teaching techniques that still work when every human has all the world's info at their finger tips 24/7. At some point, an uninterruptible, 24/7 live connection to the rest of the world is inevitable. I'm not convinced a human teacher i…

Ah yes, some point (possibly 100s of years into the future) we have to be concerned with a sci-fi scenario not borne in reality so we can't possibly ban cellphones now. Just ignore all the negative externalities of these mass misery machines, we have to plan for a future that has no basis in reality!

There needs to be a politics of rejection, because I an assure you 95% of humanity does not want a device implanted in their skull where communication sent to you is unblockable.

SV has clearly cooked a generation of engineers that think working on ad surveillance tech is the pinnacle of humanity and not just another American moral failing that is wrecking the world while a select few profit off it.

Re: Oregon school cell phone ban: 'Engaged students, joyful teachers'

#25
"decreed by executive order"

That's the only bummer here. I do agree with this policy, but no one voted for it. The governor just said "you're going to do this".

Yes, yes, I know - people elected the governor. But this sort of policy seems like something that should require legislative approval, not just one person deciding the whole state must do something.

For every time something good comes of that kind of behavior, there's 10 times when it's a disaster.

Re: Oregon school cell phone ban: 'Engaged students, joyful teachers'

#26

I don't think banning is the right solution to this. At some point, I think we are going to have comms devices imbedded in our heads and whatnot. I think the right approach is finding teaching techniques that still work when every human has all the world's info at their finger tips 24/7. At some point, an uninterruptible, 24/7 live connection to the rest of the world is inevitable. I'm not convinced a human teacher i…

We're talking about kids, not adults. You ban cell phones for the same we weren't allowed to play our Gameboy during class when I was a kid. They lack the self control and decision making capabilities to forgo something fun for the sake of something important.

Not to mention we have plenty of studies that show even a silent phone sitting quietly in your pocket or on your desk can be an attention drain, as you're subconsciously waiting for a notification to go off.

I'm amazed it took this long for the schools to finally ban the damn things.

Re: Oregon school cell phone ban: 'Engaged students, joyful teachers'

#27
post #3

I agree with the cell phone bans (I would extend it to all electronic devices, schools should be pen and paper). But we just got our phones taken away in highschool.

Surely an electronic wrist watch is fine, and maybe an mp3 player. Also graphing calculators.

Do graphing calculators actually help people learn? We used them in high school, but when i needed to take calculus in university we didn't use them. I'm doubtful they are good for learning especially when trying to teach the foundations.

Re: Oregon school cell phone ban: 'Engaged students, joyful teachers'

#28
'Engaged Students, Joyful Teachers' ... but sad Zuck ! As soon as this becomes popular and Zuck's engagement numbers tank, prepare for a propaganda campaign of nuclear proportions - maybe they even pull the OG Sheryl Sandberg back to steer the PR ship. And with the current crop of cronies in office, don’t be surprised if a new ID bill will be introduced that requires "social connectivity" as requirement for ID verification. Your "trust score" might eventually depend on how much data you feed Zuck's sucking machine and whether you’ve hit your daily scroll quota. If you think that sounds crazy, you haven't been paying attention to how fast the goalposts are moving.

Re: Oregon school cell phone ban: 'Engaged students, joyful teachers'

#29
post #21

I'm a little confussd... was there a point they were allowed? I went to school in the late 2000s, and even at that point if a teacher saw you with a cell phone it was immediately confiscated.

Late 2000s was just after smartphones became a thing, and before they became a crack epidemic. In my personal experience, it has really been bad for about the last 10 years, getting better over the last few years however. Took a few years for everyone to really understand how bad the problem had become and how quickly.

Re: Oregon school cell phone ban: 'Engaged students, joyful teachers'

#30
UK here. My kid's school is insane. They think they are so progressive because they banned personal phones entirely, which is fair enough. But they forced us to buy marked up Yondr pouches, which is not fair.

However this isn't the only problem. They also force us to pay monthly for iPads with wonky ass Logitech cases to be issued on which they do everything on Google classroom.

Google Classroom is an abhorrently bad bit of software on an iPad. It's just horrible in every possible way. Clunky, interface sucks, slow, unreliable.

Then they give detentions when children can't submit work, some auth issue means the entire device goes down the toilet for two days, documents won't open because the staff use Office instead, they keyboard case craps out and you can't type with anything but the screen, the staff forget to submit the work until an hour before it's due, the entire school wifi network is down for a week and they have no backup.

They should ban that too. Technology MUST be fit for purpose in a classroom and most of it isn't.

Go back to paper for everything. Work, journals, timetables, the lot. And the teachers can use whatever to drive projectors in the classroom.

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