May 2008 — Features
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Fill 'Er Up
What to do with all those cell phones, PDAs, and iPods tucked away in students' backpacks? Forward-thinking administrators have found a 'smart' solution: Load them with educational content and welcome them into instruction.
"How many students are told at the beginning of each school year,
'Leave your cell phone in your locker; turn off the phone'?" asks June St. Clair Atkinson in a recent
blog entry. "While we give students paper planners at the beginning of the year, what about students
who want to use a cell phone, a BlackBerry, or an MP3 player as a time manager, a note-taking
device, and as a way of assessing one's own learning through text messaging?"
Atkinson, a state superintendent with the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction and an outspoken proponent of the use of these so-called converged devices in education, then poses the million-dollar riddle that confounds every debate over a specific technology's place in the classroom: "How can educators incorporate the use of cell phones and other handheld devices as instructional tools rather than instructional distractions?"
In North Carolina, school systems are aiming to show just how it can be done. In February, the NCDPI, which is responsible for 115 local public school districts and 100 charter schools, launched Project K-Nect, an effort to address the large math and science skills deficit in North Carolina schools by using a tool that almost every student owns-a cell phone. Teachers will distribute to students math problems that are aligned to their personal lesson plans, which correspond to North Carolina state standards. Students get a chance to solve the problems through their mobile devices. If unable to, they can turn to a repository of digital instructional materials or a peer collaboration and communication environment for support.
For the pilot program, NCDPI and its partners, educational technology consulting firm Digital Millennial Consulting and wireless service provider Qualcomm, distributed 100 smartphones to four high schools in three school districts in the state. Set to run through June of this year, the project will be followed up with research to examine whether smartphones actually can be credited with increasing student achievement in math.
