Cell phones in the classroom.

Cell phones in the classroom. YOU HAVE WORKED HARD ON YOUR LESSON PLAN, and your studentsactually appear to be listening closely to your words of wisdom, whensuddenly a cell phone starts playing one of the latest hip hop hip-hop? or hip hopn.1. A popular urban youth culture, closely associated with rap music and with the style and fashions of African-American inner-city residents.2. Rap music.adj. songs. Itwouldn't really matter if it was Mozart; in either case, the spellyou have cast over your students has been broken, and you will have towork to recapture their attention and get your lesson back on track. Now picture this scenario. There has been an emergency situation atyour school that requires police and medical attention. The firstresponders were notified immediately and given vital information by astudent with a cell phone. The school's office lines are not jammedby calls from frantic parents because they have been able to reach theirchildren on their cell phones. Banning cell phones from school, which once seemed like ano-brainer, is no longer a simple black-and-white issue. The events ofColumbine columbine, in botanycolumbine(kŏl`əmbīn), any plant of the genus Aquilegia, temperate-zone perennials of the family Ranunculaceae (buttercup family), popular both as wildflowers and as garden flowers. and 9/11 are what changed the policies in some states andcommunities--or created serious discussions about changing them. Education Week reported in a July 12 article on the issues thatarose in New York City New York City:see New York, city. New York CityCity (pop., 2000: 8,008,278), southeastern New York, at the mouth of the Hudson River. The largest city in the U.S. when enforcement of the city's 18-year-oldban on cell phones was stepped up. Parents cited safety issues such asthe long commutes on public transportation that many students must makeand the difficulties in coordinating the schedules of several children.In New York New York, state, United StatesNew York,Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of , the parents' concerns unable to reach their childrenin the event of another terrorist attack are not easy to dismiss, butthe logistics of collecting thousands of cell phones each day and thenreturning them again seem terribly difficult to manage. School officialsin New York have concerns about teachers having to confront students inthe classroom when phones go off, as well as the distractions that willcause. Even in places where cell phones are not banned from schoolgrounds, there are usually limits that are set--phones must be turnedoff during school hours or set to voice mail only. Some teachers haveresorted to collecting cell phones at the beginning of the class andreturning them at the end. Some just collect the ones that ring duringclass. One teacher even discovered a student, Chinese restaurant See: Chinese cuisine American Chinese cuisine Canadian Chinese cuisine Chinese restaurant syndrome Chinese restaurant process (a concept in probability theory) Cantonese restaurant The Chinese Restaurant, a second season episode of Seinfeld menu inhand, ordering lunch during class. Both the menu and the cell phone wereconfiscated con��fis��cate?tr.v. con��fis��cat��ed, con��fis��cat��ing, con��fis��cates1. To seize (private property) for the public treasury.2. To seize by or as if by authority. See Synonyms at appropriate.adj. . While cell phones were once feared by schools because they wereused by drug dealers, the concerns are now just as much about theirmisuse in the classroom--from the more innocuous distractions such asplaying video games See video game console. and communicating with friends, to cheating by textmessaging Sending short messages to a smartphone, pager, PDA or other handheld device. Text messaging implies sending short messages generally no more than a couple of hundred characters in length. or taking pictures of tests. Teachers are also concernedbecause cell phones have gotten so small that they are now very easy toconceal. On the plus side, many of those new features are being used byteachers to supplement learning for their students. For a school with alimited number of digital cameras and limited Internet access See how to access the Internet. inclassrooms, cell phones can help fill in the gaps, serving almost asmobile computers. With a cell phone in the classroom, a career and technicaleducation teacher might be able to supervise a student's phoneinterview for a possible internship or apprenticeship. For a studentinterested in information technology or telecommunications, a cell phonecan certainly be a learning tool. Because they are so focused on life skills, there are almostcertainly family and consumer sciences teachers who are already teachingtheir students about proper cell phone etiquette. It is an importantlesson in personal responsibility that many adults still need to learn. Teachers themselves have been known to forget to silence their cellphones during class. One teacher in an online article reports that hisown cell phone began playing Fifty Cent's "In da Club" inthe middle of one of his student's speeches. His students found ithilarious, but he describes himself as being "mortified mor��ti��fy?v. mor��ti��fied, mor��ti��fy��ing, mor��ti��fiesv.tr.1. To cause to experience shame, humiliation, or wounded pride; humiliate.2. ." One thing seems clear: cell phones are not going away anytime soon,and when they do, it will be because they have been replaced by some newtechnology with its own benefits and drawbacks. In the meantime Adv. 1. in the meantime - during the intervening time; "meanwhile I will not think about the problem"; "meantime he was attentive to his other interests"; "in the meantime the police were notified"meantime, meanwhile , schooldistricts will have to wrestle with the issues of regulating theirpresence, and teachers will have to decide how to deal with them in theclassroom. Cell phones are going to continue to present teachers withmany problems--and with the occasional teachable teach��a��ble?adj.1. That can be taught: teachable skills.2. Able and willing to learn: teachable youngsters. moment.