Literature Article #1

Title: "Cell Phones as Teaching Tools"
Author: William M. Ferriter
Periodical: Educational Leadership, Vol.68, Issue 2, p.85-86
Link to Article:  http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/oct10/vol68/num02/Cell-Phones-as-Teaching-Tools.aspx

This article very briefly describes how, in the authors opinion, cell phones can be used as tools in the classroom instead of distractions. With broad, non-cited statistics to back up his findings, such as 75% of all kids ages 12-17 have cell phones, and 75% of all students with cell phone have unlimited texting plans, the author states that there are only two steps you need to take in order to use cell phones in classrooms as tools.

The first step is  to "Make cell phones visible". By this he means instead of fearing what students might be doing with their phones  hidden underneath a desk, have all your students keep their phones on their desks so you can see when they go off.The author believes that this will cause students to act more responsibly with their phones in school. I don't believe this because I feel that you can never make anyone act responsibly. The only thing i believe this first step will cause is even bigger distractions because the teacher will not only hear it going off in the middle of a lesson, but see them all texting back "I'm in class right now call me later".

The second and final step the author outlines in his article is titled "Show colleagues and administrators one convincing classroom application". In my opinion, he means "Convince the people that sign your paychecks that cell phones can be useful in class". The example he uses to demonstrate this point is a polling application that is web based called Poll Everywhere. With this program the teacher can set up questions and polls that they display to the class, then the class has to text their response to the website for data collection and results. The problem i see with this is that their are many other ways to poll a class that doesn't involve possibly charging their parents for texting. I foresee a few angry emails from parents asking why their student was forced to text even though they don't have an unlimited plan. In short, I believe this author needs more research and better examples to really convince me that cell phones are a useful tool in a classroom setting.