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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'

#81

Post by simplyluke »

Rebelgecko wrote: post #34
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.

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.

> a surprisingly large amount of the distraction is parents texting kids while they're at school

We're entering pretty substantial numbers of parents who grew up or at least spent their entire adult lives with cell phones and the expectation of constant communication. In fact, from my anecdotal experience, the mid-older millennial cohort is the worst at expecting immediate replies at all hours to any form of communication be it social or work.

One of the things I realize I'm grateful for in hindsight is parents who didn't grow up with that, and had no problem calling the front desk of the school if there was a legitimate emergency that needed to involve pulling me out of school. And it turns out for anything short of that, the news could wait until 4PM.

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

#82

Post by jjgreen »

shimman wrote: post #33
bananamogul wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In 2026 the number of people with mp3 players that are not also smart phones is vanishingly small.

If you are interested in standalone digital audio players (DAPs), I just recently bought this: https://www.fiio.com/echomini For ~$60 you get a device that can play every type of audio file and has better sound quality than your cellphone + streamer combo. I've been reading more about Chinese hardware and if you've been sleeping on it there are a lot of great Chinese consumer products that are both extremely high qua…

Woah, skeuomorphism writ large!

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

#83

Post by Aurornis »

lastofthemojito wrote: post #79
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.

But this new law also involves confiscation.

I don't think that explains anything.

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

#84

Post by alexfoo »

drivebyhooting wrote: post #7
galleywest200 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Why do you need a music player in school?

I gave my 16yo ADHD kid an mp3 player with hours of “ADHD focus” music on it.

It’s proven very useful a few times where a few ND-unaware teachers have confiscated phones that the ND kids use to help them focus.

They don’t get it to use it whenever they want but there are some situations where they are allowed to use it and where having a phone is tricky given the lack of trust some teachers have.

Old school technology fallbacks are sometimes useful. Who knew.

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

#85

Post by DenisM »

nabbed wrote: post #62

I would love it if my laptop had a "study mode" for when I am trying to debug something or learn something new using my laptop. Some of us have less than stellar self-control, so a study mode which requires a multi-step rigamarole to shut off might prevent me from casually checking my email or a news website when I am supposed to be learning a new data structure or figuring out a data corruption bug. I have no idea h…

Create a separate Mac / Windows non-admin account just for coding? I’m sure there are parental control measures for either platform. As time goes you can update the deny list of web sites.

Another thing that helps is recording your screen for the whole day. Once you start doing review in the evening it will create back-pressure on the monkey brain that jumps to distractions.

Yet another thing is to setup a separate computer. You can browse crapnet as long as you want, but you have to walk to another desk. The back pressure is subtle but has long-term effect and requires very kittke will power.

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

#86

Post by masfuerte »

bawolff wrote: post #27
galleywest200 wrote: post #5

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.

I don't see the need for it. The only time I ever needed to graph a function was to answer a homework problem that specifically asked me to. Having your calculator do it misses the point.

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

#87

Post by donatj »

dgxyz wrote: post #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…

I have worked in Edtech for the last 15 years, and I stand by it when I say most of it is just added noise.

1:1 programs are a waste of money and time. Students don't need continuous access to a computer. Shared computer labs with a set goal for the time will always have better outcomes.

Kids frankly aren't learning more today with all this tech in the classroom than they were twenty years ago with paper and whiteboards, and the metrics prove it.

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

#88

Post by lastofthemojito »

genthree wrote: post #73
temp84858696945 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Yeah, there was a recent NYT article about the ongoing phone ban/pouch discussion and one parent reported having a shared Google Doc for emergency communication with their kid to work around the lack of a cell phone. The nature of such emergencies was not discussed, but I cynically suspect it was along the lines of "do you want mac n cheese or nuggets for dinner?"

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/25/style/yondr-pouch-school-...

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

#89

Post by alexfoo »

corporate_pie wrote: post #70
nabbed wrote: post #62

I would love it if my laptop had a "study mode" for when I am trying to debug something or learn something new using my laptop. Some of us have less than stellar self-control, so a study mode which requires a multi-step rigamarole to shut off might prevent me from casually checking my email or a news website when I am supposed to be learning a new data structure or figuring out a data corruption bug. I have no idea h…

Here is how it would work in real life: The laptop would come with a study mode button. You would push it and turn off distractions. Then 5 minutes later you would disable it just to send a chat. Then since it was off, you'd just quickly check TikTok. Then while you're at it, it just a quick break, you'd pop over to Twitch. 3 hours later... If you can't teach yourself restraint, a button won't help.

That’s a very simplistic view.

Granted it won’t work for 100% of people but I’m sure it would work for lots of people.

Something as simple as a button you have to press to disable it is often enough of a barrier to prevent people from doing that as it makes the context switch from work to non-work more obvious than simply alt-tabbing to a different browser window.

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

#90

Post by kelvinjps10 »

jedberg wrote: post #54
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.

In the last 10 years, driven a lot by school shootings, the tide shifted and parents started fighting schools about letting their kids keep their phone "so they can be contacted in emergencies". The schools gave up fighting with the parents. Laws like this give the school cover to confiscate the phones and say "talk to your congressperson if this bothers you, my hands are tied".

There is a difference between being allowed to have the phone (in your pocket) and taking it out in the classroom.
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