I was a student of one of these so called smartphone free schools and I used my smartphone during class time. Just because it was banned. So I highly doubt this'll work.
Group of 17 London secondary schools join up to go smartphone-free
171–180 of 192 posts
Re: Group of 17 London secondary schools join up to go smartphone-free
#172Earlier quoted context omitted.
How did people ever survive school 20 years without such an ability? There is an easy solution that could be implemented. Kids can go to the office during lunch or a break and request their phone. They can send their message and then give back their phone.
20 years ago the chance that someone could steal or abuse a child on or from the way to school was way much higher. People have already started forgetting about it. No phone = no way to track back the criminal or the crime.
Source of your data over 20 years?
If you look at nonfamily child abductions, most of them involve kids between 0 and 5. Also in a significant proportion of abduction, the kid is not even targeted as it involve parents leaving the kid in a car and the car is stolen.
Re: Group of 17 London secondary schools join up to go smartphone-free
#173Earlier quoted context omitted.
The damage done to kids by smartphones greatly exceeds the safety benefits you describe IMHO. Your use of hyperbolic language like "unhinged" suggests you're addicted to your smartphone or at least you're in denial about the damage it did to you.
In the winter it’s common for kids to walk home from school after dark, if there are after-school activities. I did that many times as a kid and it was scary. I would have felt a lot better with a smartphone. I’m a grown adult and I wouldn’t feel comfortable walking around London in the dark without a smartphone. Taking a phone away from an 11 year old before they walk back home in the dark is unhinged, it’s not hype…
>I’m a grown adult and I wouldn’t feel comfortable walking around London in the dark without a smartphone.
Can we talk about this for a minute? Suppose a big guy or a group of guys see you walking in London in the dark and decide to do you violence. What is the main way a smartphone can help you in your opinion? By giving you a chance to get photos of them? By helping you get emergency medical help after they beat you up?
I'm genuinely curious, not just trying to score points.
Is there some danger other than violence from strangers that you think the smartphone will help you with?
Re: Group of 17 London secondary schools join up to go smartphone-free
#174Earlier quoted context omitted.
20 years ago the chance that someone could steal or abuse a child on or from the way to school was way much higher. People have already started forgetting about it. No phone = no way to track back the criminal or the crime.
Source of your data over 20 years? If you look at nonfamily child abductions, most of them involve kids between 0 and 5. Also in a significant proportion of abduction, the kid is not even targeted as it involve parents leaving the kid in a car and the car is stolen.
why exclude family? that's the primary case is it not?
Re: Group of 17 London secondary schools join up to go smartphone-free
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a father of a 4 year old boy, I plan to remove smart phones and pads from my son for as long as possible. He can watch TV or play console/PC games but absolutely no mobile games for as long as I can. He will get a dumbphone maybe with a snake game when he grows up a bit. In the mean time, I'll try to bring him to hiking, camping and other outdoor activities. If he is very into electronics then I'll introduce gamin…
Educational dos games. You can't beat them. Where they're at an age before knowing FPS, MMOs they will have tons of fun jumping up and collecting words. Word Rescue, Maths Rescue the Fun School series all hold weight to name a few. Just because the old don't have hyper-ai-raytracing graphics doesn't mean they're not playable for the younger generations.
I've started introducing retro handhelds that can emulate most older console games to my kids.
They really like games like Tetris, Pokemon and Zelda.
It's fantastic.
Re: Group of 17 London secondary schools join up to go smartphone-free
#176Earlier quoted context omitted.
What useful things could a smartphone do during school hours. You have a literal internet connected computer with any function you could care to name, interactive touch screen display, full sound with headphones being provided by the student . The situation we have now is that there are few apps that are suitable for a classrooms, even fewer which teachers would be allowed to use and none which are endorsed or includ…
with [1], you already said it. iPads serve that function. Have these really improved classroom education, or is it just a more convoluted, fidgety way to get through the materials? > There is no reason that a students phone couldn't become the world's most amazing educational too Or, some new, advanced technology exists, therefore, because it is new and advanced, it needs to be applied. This is an affliction.
I think my broader point is that whatever technology has been adopted hasn't had a noticeable effect and that's due to the usage, attitude and hence supporting infrastructure to adopt them.
GP asked what use a smartphone would have, implying that it could only ever be bad. I'm just arguing that this isn't necessarily the case, not that we should adopt it or even that adoption is likely.
Re: Group of 17 London secondary schools join up to go smartphone-free
#177Earlier quoted context omitted.
Source of your data over 20 years? If you look at nonfamily child abductions, most of them involve kids between 0 and 5. Also in a significant proportion of abduction, the kid is not even targeted as it involve parents leaving the kid in a car and the car is stolen.
why exclude family? that's the primary case is it not?
Because I guess a family abduction involve a good knowledge of the victim/behavior and I would guess the first thing the abductor would do is making sure he isn't tracked by getting rid of the phone and not using their own in a radius around the scene of the abduction.
Quite a different set of parameters than abductors targetting random kids in a gas station and driving away with the car.
Re: Group of 17 London secondary schools join up to go smartphone-free
#178Earlier quoted context omitted.
with [1], you already said it. iPads serve that function. Have these really improved classroom education, or is it just a more convoluted, fidgety way to get through the materials? > There is no reason that a students phone couldn't become the world's most amazing educational too Or, some new, advanced technology exists, therefore, because it is new and advanced, it needs to be applied. This is an affliction.
I think my broader point is that whatever technology has been adopted hasn't had a noticeable effect and that's due to the usage, attitude and hence supporting infrastructure to adopt them. GP asked what use a smartphone would have, implying that it could only ever be bad. I'm just arguing that this isn't necessarily the case, not that we should adopt it or even that adoption is likely.
Fair enough, I follow. but we've had about 20 years now, and it doesn't seem like any improvements have materialized, if anything, there's only negatives with kids being on their phones during school time. it's ok to axe to put this one on the loss pile, and move on.
Re: Group of 17 London secondary schools join up to go smartphone-free
#179Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a predefined period sure, but I assume kids in crutches still skip PE and whatnot, though you might be calling it something else. Whatever you call a disruption in normal education such as when a teacher gets in a car accident on the way to work and suddenly there’s a non educational period for kids.
> Whatever you call a disruption in normal education such as when a teacher gets in a car accident on the way to work and suddenly there’s a non educational period for kids. Supply teacher. No idea how the details were worked out, but there was always a substitute if the usual was unavailable for whatever reason.
The school's own teachers would cover for an injured colleague in an emergency like this. The lesson timetable will be written to ensure there's always some teachers free.
Given more notice, the school phones supply teachers (or an agency for them). Some of these teachers will expect to be ready to get to a school with very little notice.
In the worst case, where the cover teacher has not had chance to discuss what lesson is needed, they're going to say "let's go through the last chapter in the textbook" rather than "I give up, fiddle on your phones".
Re: Group of 17 London secondary schools join up to go smartphone-free
#180The cool / mischevious kids will still bring phones to school, while life of the calm kids will be made miserable. Story old as time. Fascinating that people here cant predict it.
This is like someone suggesting murder should be illegal, and the main argument being “but some people will still do it anyway”.
Bringing a phone to school is murder? Before smartphones kids brought (comic) books and read them during lessons, or just looked through the window and daydreamed.
Or they would write notes to each other. Is that murder too?