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Jamie Doward reports at The Guardian that according to a recent study in the UK, the effect of banning mobile phones from school premises adds up to the equivalent of an extra week’s schooling over a pupil’s academic year with the test scores of students aged 16 improved by 6.4% after schools banned mobile phones, “We found that not only did student achievement improve, but also that low-achieving and low-income students gained the most. We found the impact of banning phones for these students was equivalent to an additional hour a week in school, or to increasing the school year by five days." In the UK, more than 90% of teenagers own a mobile phone; in the US, just under three quarters have one. In a survey conducted in 2001, no school banned mobiles. By 2007, this had risen to 50%, and by 2012 some 98% of schools either did not allow phones on school premises or required them to be handed in at the beginning of the day. But some schools are starting to allow limited use of the devices. New York mayor Bill de Blasio has lifted a 10-year ban on phones on school premises, with the city’s chancellor of schools stating that it would reduce inequality.
The research was carried out at Birmingham, London, Leicester and Manchester schools before and after bans were introduced (PDF). It factored in characteristics such as gender, eligibility for free school meals, special educational needs status and prior educational attainment. “Technological advancements are commonly viewed as increasing productivity,” write Louis-Philippe Beland and Richard Murphy. “Modern technology is used in the classroom to engage students and improve performance. There are, however, potential drawbacks as well, as they could lead to distractions.”
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 18 2015, @03:58AM
Yes, Michael, you're absolutely right. The method that works best for you will also work best for every other student in the entire world.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by GungnirSniper on Monday May 18 2015, @04:06AM
So true. I tend to learn best by discussion, by being able to add to or question the subject material. Writing some notes can be helpful, but so too can using a highlighter in a textbook. Everyone is different.
The real problem may be that kids today simply don't have the attention span they once did. I believe that having everyone go at the same pace is harmful to both the faster and the slower.
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(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Monday May 18 2015, @05:24AM
Actually, there is support for Michael's position. Writing something down engages other aspect of the mental process, so that even if the notes are never reviewed (although that is not a bad idea, either) it increases learning. (And gosh, I love to use phrases like "increases learning" because they are completely meaningless! I must have manually written that down someplace. ) And, on the other hand, blank pages of notebook paper do not contain sexting, usually.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Kell on Monday May 18 2015, @05:39AM
To add another data point, I found that I had the best success at uni when I had pre-written notes produced by the teacher (slides or handouts) that I could refer to later on, so I didn't have to split my attention between following what was being discussed and what I was writing down. Being an active participant in the class by asking questions and engaging was so much better than hurriedly trying to make notes about stuff that's in the textbook anyway. Now that I'm a professional educator, I always produce high quality slide decks for my students just because I know it can be so useful; I also provide recordings of my lectures and engage students in discussion to try to cover all the bases.
I think the unfortunate reality is that delivering multimodal learning content is expensive and few people are good at writing notes and lecturing and discussing all at the same time. Therefore, lecturers craft their presentation styles around the format that they themselves are personally comfortable with.
Scientists ask questions. Engineers solve problems.
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Monday May 18 2015, @11:25AM
Being an active participant in the class by asking questions and engaging was so much better than hurriedly trying to make notes about stuff that's in the textbook anyway.
I suspect that with a class size of no more than 10, it would work well. With a class size of 30, for an hour, gives about 2 minutes per student, and 58 minutes of not interacting. In lectures at university, with class sizes over 100, it's clearly not going to work.
Being able to pause and rewind lectures, while having the notes already, is a far better approach to being talked at, and perhaps having one comment to make during the hour.
(Score: 2) by Kell on Monday May 18 2015, @11:42AM
Coincidentally, I'm currently teaching a class of 30 students, and only rarely does the time taken by asking questions blow out the session. By and large, most interactions are quick and it is generally one or two vocal students who ask questions. Most of the other students have the same questions, but are just less forward about it. While it might be 2 minutes per student, it's more often 2 minutes per dozen students all with the same question. The experiences I have had teaching 140 and 200 students were similar, but ironically with fewer questions - it seems that large group sizes naturally discourage students from participating. I see this as a Very Bad Thing for quality of teaching.
Scientists ask questions. Engineers solve problems.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday May 18 2015, @12:27PM
The perspective from the other side of the lectern was that most of the people asking questions should STFU and go to office hours or try doing the assigned readings before the lecture.
So you got 30 kids in class, one interrupts the prof "So clearly I haven't read the first line of the assigned readings, could you tell me the first line" and the prof takes a deep breath rolls eyes and "OK listen as I read the first line to you", and 29 other classmates pissed off because now the prof doesn't have time to explain something somewhat more complicated like "discuss the three metaphors about life in Hamlet's speech to Horatio especially the weird one about forts and moles" or whatever. But at least the class dumbass/clown did get to clarify that Shakespeare wrote the play about Hamlet instead of the other way around as the clown had assumed, having not bothered to even crack open the clif notes much less the play.
Honestly, again from experience, I think the "most students have the same question" is more a sociological experiment in cultural attitudes toward shaming and conformity than anything else. "Yeah sure prof I had the same question as moron over there; I also thought Hamlet wrote a play about Shakespeare and I so happy dumbass was brave enough to clear it up for the entire class" (meanwhile my teeth are grinding and my eyes are rolling at about 4 hz rotation rate and my face looks like I just bit a habanero pepper) "Sure prof I'm glad we spent the lecture talking about sesame street level stuff I figured out myself, while I sit here confused about the hard parts, I'll just study extra harder before the test that the class idiot is going to fail anyway, sure am glad you couldn't clear up the complicated stuff for me, not like this makes me resent the class idiot or anything like that, naw not me"
Or TLDR as a student I hated when classmates asked questions, and basically all of them were dumb questions.
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Monday May 18 2015, @07:53PM
But "Being an active participant in the class by asking questions and engaging" means asking those questions, and 28 of your students aren't doing that.
I did about 6 months of tutorials/lectures/etc as part of my broadcast engineer training. It was far better than a year of university, due to
1) Having coffee
2) Having a small class size (between 8 and 20, but the ones with 20 and the droning lecturer were by far the worst, it was only for 3 weeks though)
3) Having a practical use for the knowledge
4) Having short "terms" -- the longest stint was 8 weeks, but most were 3 or 4 weeks, then it was back to work.
5) Everyone having roughly the same capability to learn
The small class sizes allowed engagement.
However for your typical high school, this can't work
1) Setting/streaming students is a dirty word. I wasted 400 hours of my life in French because I hadn't got a clue, and would far rather be in a remedial class (or better learning a smaller selection of useful languages like Mandarin, Arabic and Russian, again in the remedial class). On the other hand I (like most here I guess) got into trouble in "computing" as class time was spent teaching people which end of a mouse to use.
2) Financial issues means class sizes are going to be 30+
3) School is day-care in disguise. All the parties in the recent UK were promising taxpayers help to outsource your kids upbringing to nurseries at an earlier and earlier stage, so you can get back to work. Wont be long before 3 year olds get sent to boarding school [bbc.co.uk].
4) 80% of people, at least, are not interested in learning for learning's sake, especially as a teenager. If you could reliably identify thee people who are that's great, but that's not really possible possible. This leads to #5
5) There's little practical use, certainly immediate practical use, for most subjects you learn at high school -- entire subjects are just worthless from that perspective, from History to English Lit, even if it (attempts) to teach core skills. Geography can be useful if you're learning how to read a map, or understand why your garden's flooded, woodwork if you make a chair or something you can say "I made that", but many of the rest are just subjects to be studied for the end goal of taking an exam. In the 20 years since I dropped history, not once have I needed my knowlege of Mott and Bailey castles, and my knowlege of the industrial revolution was surpassed by a 2 hour visit to Styal Mill. Sure there's the benefit of understanding "history is written by the victors", but rather than dry irrelevant history of the roman empire, something a bit closer to home (like the cold war or something), or teaching history to explain current events, would have been far better, at least to me. For instance, the partitioning of Arabia, why it happened, and what the consequences are.
(Score: 2) by Kell on Monday May 18 2015, @11:29PM
You realise we're talking about university, right? Big class sizes, but (mostly) engaged students, no streaming (depending on uni), big focus on practical core topics in your domain and certainly not day care. I agree with your points in regards to grade school, but university is a different beast, despite the increasing tendency of people to treat it like an extension of high school.
Scientists ask questions. Engineers solve problems.
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Tuesday May 19 2015, @06:58AM
This article is clearly about high school
(Score: 2) by Kell on Tuesday May 19 2015, @07:35AM
Yes, but you'll recall from my first comment "I found that I had the best success at uni when... " and from your own reply "In lectures at university...". TFS notwithstanding, I was given to think we were discussing these issues in the context of university education in this sub-thread.
Scientists ask questions. Engineers solve problems.
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Wednesday May 20 2015, @09:08AM
I was approaching it from a "what works in uni (for some people), can't work in high school" pov.
(Score: 2) by Kell on Wednesday May 20 2015, @11:17AM
Ok, no worries. :)
I think we are seeing both sides of the issue here. Clearly at university some teaching approaches can be used that would not be appropriate for high schools (and vice versa). As it is, I don't have experience teaching outside of a university, so I couldn't say exactly where that dividing line is.
Scientists ask questions. Engineers solve problems.