After reading the article, Tackling tech: How some Ontario teachers are attempting to limit students’ cell phone use by Nadine Yousif. Even though it was a short article, I felt as if it expressed many important ideas and examples; therefore, I chose to do a visual representation of a brainstorm sketch/mind map on Canva to display the key ideas I took away from the article. The article explores the impact of cell phone use in classrooms and how teachers fight a battle every single day to keep their students from being distracted from their personal devices. There were two devices that were being used by two teachers at the same school in Kitchener, Ontario. The first was the Yondr pouch, the cell phone is placed in the pouch and can only be unlocked by the teacher. This is a good idea to keep the control in your classroom; however, students may feel hostile about giving their property to be locked up by a teacher. Whereas the Resistor Case is a pouch that uses Velcro to keep it closed. The students are able to open the pouches to retrieve their cell phones; however, an obnoxiously loud Velcro noise will alert the whole class that you are retrieving your cell phone. This idea is excellent, because the students are being made to think twice of their actions and are accountable for looking at their cell phone or not but it can also be disruptive.
I had a lot of thoughts of my own experience in school and also my experiences in the classroom after reading this article. I remember hiding my cell phone in my pencil case during certain classes to send text messages and if you were to ask me what I learned in those classes, I would have a hard time telling you. It does make you distracted and keeps you from being present and engaged with your teacher and your classmates. However, it is a difficult issue to regulate, I don’t believe that a school wide band would be optimal because faculty would then have to police the use of cell phones instead of incorporating them and technology into their lessons. Furthermore, students would want to use them more because it has been taken away from them. I believe that we have to grow with the technology around us and try to incorporate those devices in our classroom. Certainly, there can be a time to have them stored away, when there are presentations or a test, but it does not have to be all the time. Students will then see that there is a positive relation between education and technology that is accessible to them and they can learn how to use their devices for educational purposes! These devices aren’t going away anytime soon and they might even evolve into more advanced items that become necessities to the way we live. The problem may be that we are continuously fighting this battle instead of changing the way we look at this issue. We should be looking at how it can be incorporated. I know that I wouldn’t want my students on their phones the whole time that I am speaking and that may be my own anxiety of not being able to control my classroom. After reading this article, and seeing that the phones were locked away, it has made me realize it is the anxiety of the teachers that are afraid of interacting with technology or losing the control they want to have in their room. I have that fear as well, when in reality I know that I should be innovative and think of ways to create a positive link with these devices and my lessons.
I have never used Canva before, but many of my classmates have and enjoyed it. Therefore, I wanted to try to familiarize myself with the resource. I find that brainstorming and writing key ideas after reading something helps organize the main ideas and facilitates the next steps in an assignment. I wanted to create a visual representation of a brainstorm/mind map because you could ask your students to do this on Canva after an assigned reading and before they begin a response, essay, or journal entry. I enjoyed Canva because it did give you some templates but you could also design it to make it your own by changing the colours and sizes of icons, moving them around the page to the way you want. I like that there was a lot to choose from as well, if every student created one, they would all look different and reflect that students style and knowledge.