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

portlandtribune.com

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

#71

Post by technothrasher »

Auracle wrote: post #49
technothrasher wrote: post #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…

Way back when I was in school (2004 or so) I set up a proxy on my personal website to get around them blocking email, because I don’t want to have to save things to a damned floppy drive. I then let a teacher use it because he was frustrated half of his search results would get blocked. From there, it spread like wildfire. Eventually they blocked it and from then on the IT guy would give me a side eye whenever we cro…

Back in the day when every hotel that was charging for WiFi was stupidly leaving port 53 wide open, I wrote an IP over DNS tunnel to get free WiFi. Worked great until I went to a hotel in Tokyo and turned it on. Suddenly my network connection was completely dead. They were clearly watching for shenanigans. Took me a few minutes to figure out they had redirected my MAC address to the bit bucket. I spoofed my MAC to a different one, and then behaved, as well as admired those IT guys.

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

#72

Post by starkparker »

dizzy9 wrote: 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…

Don't get it twisted, almost every Portland-area school has gone full in on the stupid fucking Yondr pouches, and yeah it fucked up entry/exit: https://katu.com/news/local/portland-students-adapt-to-new-c...

They also begged parents to help pay for them: https://www.govtech.com/education/k-12/portland-schools-ask-...

A friend's kid needs an exemption from their doctor because their phone is also their glucose monitor and diagnostic tracker, and the exception only allows them to unlock the pouch under supervision when necessary.

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

#73

Post by genthree »

temp84858696945 wrote: post #47
Rebelgecko wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Around 2015 or so they became a lot more accepted. From talking to teachers, a surprisingly large amount of the distraction is parents texting kids while they're at school.

I wonder how much of that is actually parents texting kids, and how much of that is that kids are using that as an excuse to why they checked their phone mid class. That seems like one of the easiest excuses for kids to make that is hard to argue against.

No, no, it's the parent.

Parents calling their kids in class isn't as rare as you might think...

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

#74

Post by moduspol »

wjholden wrote: post #52

For what it's worth — my last workplace did not allow cell phones in the building and I learned to love it. When people attended meetings, we all made eye contact and talked about the task at hand. Nobody ever got distracted by notifications or tuned out with boredom. And since we all had traditional telephones at our desks, someone would come get you if your family was calling with for an urgent crisis. I miss it. M…

> I would be interested to see if there are already statistics showing academic success.

It's fair to expect that data, though honestly at this point, it might also be reasonable to expect data that increased screens IMPROVE the outcomes before allowing or issuing them.

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

#75

Post by Planktonne »

caderosche wrote: post #15

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…

> At some point, I think we are going to have comms devices imbedded in our heads and whatnot.

This will have limited impact because, at some point shortly after that, the moon will hatch and the lunar dragons will consume our satellite infrastructure, disabling all comm devices.

You can't make policy now based on nebulous ideas about possible futures, particularly not when those ideas aren't based on any reasonable inference.

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

#76

Post by simplyluke »

bawolff wrote: 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.

When I was in high school in the early 2010s it was down to every teacher to enforce their own policy on phones. In practice, this meant that it was wildly variable, kids were getting texts from kids in more permissive environments (the gym teachers had no issue with you playing on your phone as you did a mile walk) which was driving FOMO and leading to students leaving the classroom to check their phones, lots of trying to sneak a look when teachers were distracted, etc.

The rollout of LTE data and more-modern smartphones + social media during that area was a nuclear bomb on teenagers's ability to focus in hindsight. I can distinctly remember the divide between dumb phones/ipods/early smart phones with slow data, and modern social media + fast cellular data to get around school network bans. Things went from the occasional student thinking they were clever with a wired headphone down their sleeve to near constant distraction very rapidly.

The "innovation" has been basic leadership -- setting policies at the school/district and in this case state level. Consistent expectations make it easier for students to follow the policy. Some schools have gone as far as physically locking phones away for the day, though reading the article it sounds like that's not what Oregon is doing.

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

#78

Post by jon-wood »

dizzy9 wrote: 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…

The sealed pouches are a bit of theatre. My son's school has a policy that pupil's can take their phones to school but if one is seen or heard on the school grounds it'll be confiscated and the owner's parents called to come pick it up on their behalf. From what I hear they're not shy about applying that policy either.

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

#79

Post by lastofthemojito »

bawolff wrote: 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.

From my teacher spouse's perspective, a lot of it seems to be the monetary value of smartphones. Some kids are coming to school with the latest and greatest $1000+ smartphone, so if the teacher drops it, scuffs it, misplaces it, etc, the parents are coming after the teacher about an item with real value. Teachers don't want any part of that battle so confiscation is now off the table.

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

#80

Post by Aurornis »

bawolff wrote: 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.

I'm also confused by stories that imply that kids were allowed to use their phones during class.

The local schools I'm familiar with allowed phones in backpacks, but if you got caught using it during class there were consequences.

Enforcement was never perfect. Some teachers didn't care, some students were sneaky enough to not get caught. Yet the consequences seemed to keep the kids afraid of using phones for the most part (from what I've been told, obviously I wasn't sitting with them in class).

Some of these articles are written like entire classrooms were just scrolling their phones during class? I don't get it. Was there just a total lack of enforcement?

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