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

portlandtribune.com

161–170 of 242 posts

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

#161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole "browser game" industry is built on this phenomenon. It's about getting kids on school laptops mindlessly looping on something while shoving ads in their face. Honestly, get the tech out of classrooms. A few 8 bit machines that can run LOGO are far more genuinely educational than all the gunk they have today.

Gotta get schools back to using paper homework. There's so many of those awful online classroom portals for homework. Absolutely trash software, technically speaking.

TurnItIn.com was starting to be a thing when I was in high school. I found out it didn’t sanitize the papers you upload and had no CSRF protection, so I could upload a doc with inline JavaScript to hit the change-password and logout APIs.

Was pretty impactful for my education, just not in the intended way

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

#162

I remember reading somewhere else that there was a psychological benefit for kids as well. Not having the constant pressure to check the device. Just seems like a big win all around.

I surprisingly found this with my Apple Watch. was so concerned it would make me even more plugged in. But in reality now 90% of the time I get a junk email I just say “huh” instead of needing to open the phone to see what it is (and the other 15 notifications). Can’t have fomo if you know you’re not missing out, amirite?

That's still quite insane. I get a lot of email daily but notifications onto about priority / important ones.

Which is about 1-2 per _week_.

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

#163
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They were brilliant in electric engineering classes. I found these calculations very tedious.

For maths not so much, as it was less about providing a numerical answer, and more about understanding the question.

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

#164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is that?

The obvious reasons. People who do not have political agency should not have decisions made that prevent them from using their own devices in a setting that they are legally required to be in. That's not how things should work. One group of people should not be setting policy for another group of people in this matter. The victims of these policies aren't infants; they will be adults in about five minutes. Blankets b…

I have no idea how you've generated this principle. I'm going to ignore the noise.

1) "The victims of these policies aren't infants; they will be adults in about five minutes."

You've made no case for why adults couldn't be banned from using phones in class.

2) "They reduce the quality of life for people who rely on AAC..."

I don't know what this stands for, but if it is some sort of handicap, exceptions can be made. It's fine to ban wheelchair use in school for people who don't need wheelchairs. Even if having a wheelchair makes you stand out because everybody isn't using one.

3) "To pretend that smartphones are somehow different from that past..."

That past is very recent, and is also garbage. Chromebooks, iPods, cellphones, and "Discmans" in class is also a terrible idea. If whatever advantages that Chromebooks provide (I don't want Google in schools at all, but ignore me) are nullified by the fact that kids can bypass the security on them, get rid of them.

4) "...you have to issue laptops in order to much of the kind of relevant teaching necessary in 2026"

You definitely don't.

5) "The people who are interested in learning will learn, the others will not, that's that."

That is a good argument for not even having schools. But we have schools because we are concerned with setting up situations that can make it easier to learn, even for children who are less interested than others.

6) "Also, the Oregon ban is illegal and will be tossed out the moment that it gets to the appropriate level of judicial review - the Governor cannot make law."

The state can make policy, though, for its own schools. If this ban extended to private schools that weren't taking any money from the state, I could see this being a problem. This includes "vouchers."

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

#165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The obvious reasons. People who do not have political agency should not have decisions made that prevent them from using their own devices in a setting that they are legally required to be in. That's not how things should work. One group of people should not be setting policy for another group of people in this matter. The victims of these policies aren't infants; they will be adults in about five minutes. Blankets b…

I have no idea how you've generated this principle. I'm going to ignore the noise. 1) "The victims of these policies aren't infants; they will be adults in about five minutes." You've made no case for why adults couldn't be banned from using phones in class. 2) "They reduce the quality of life for people who rely on AAC..." I don't know what this stands for, but if it is some sort of handicap, exceptions can be made.…

If you are going to ignore 'the noise' (the actual content of my post) we don't have anything to talk about and you should not reply. Do not reply to me if you are not going to actually respond to the content of my post.

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

#167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no idea how you've generated this principle. I'm going to ignore the noise. 1) "The victims of these policies aren't infants; they will be adults in about five minutes." You've made no case for why adults couldn't be banned from using phones in class. 2) "They reduce the quality of life for people who rely on AAC..." I don't know what this stands for, but if it is some sort of handicap, exceptions can be made.…

If you are going to ignore 'the noise' (the actual content of my post) we don't have anything to talk about and you should not reply. Do not reply to me if you are not going to actually respond to the content of my post.

I'll reply to what I want, and I think I pulled out the actual content of your post.

The rest of it just seems to be strange pronouncements you are making about what people should and shouldn't want to do, and the motivations of the people you don't like.

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

#168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are going to ignore 'the noise' (the actual content of my post) we don't have anything to talk about and you should not reply. Do not reply to me if you are not going to actually respond to the content of my post.

I'll reply to what I want, and I think I pulled out the actual content of your post. The rest of it just seems to be strange pronouncements you are making about what people should and shouldn't want to do, and the motivations of the people you don't like.

[flagged]

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

#169
Just wait until you find out the benefits of taking them away from kids altogether! Phones are a mental health hazard for children, there is no benefit for them having a phone. The only downside is they feel left out when their friends only want to sit around and scroll TikTok, and can't manage to have any in person interactions without their face in a screen.

None of my children have phones, and when they do get one, it will be when they are driving and will be a dumb phone for sending text messages and making calls.

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

#170
post #43

> In crafting its policy, Estacada incorporated feedback from parents. That led to some key decisions around the cell phone ban. Rather than use pouches or lockers, students are allowed to keep their phones safely stored in their backpacks. That was for two reasons — it allows students to contact loved ones during emergencies, and many parents use phone trackers to keep tabs on their kids. I'm glad to hear this. They…

Kids are smart. My school district has sealed pouches.. Its amazing how many kids throw an old phone in there, and put their actual one away hidden on silent. Which I guess gets looked the other way, since they aren't using it in class.

It's definitely a mix of the actual phone pouches and the bans giving teachers actual authority and permission to confiscate phones when they're out and disruptive. IMO there's likely a shift that happens with pouches where there are enough kids following the rules and only having one phone in the pouch that it tips the social balance over. That would be harder with just teacher enforced bans I think.

It's definitely a hard problem over all balancing their completely disruptive nature if there's no bounds to the issues around safety and parental worry from not being able to contact their kid all the time which phones have made the norm.

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