SCHOOLS GETTING WISE TO SMARTPHONE USES

Most of the time, cellphones in school are, at best, a distraction for students. At worst, they are a way to cheat on quizzes or exams. However, some schools have found that cellphones can actually help the learning process.

Southwest High School in Onslow County, N.C., has been especially innovative with using cellphones in some of its math classes. In 2008, as part of Project K-Nect, it started using the phones to help teach Algebra 1 to a group of rural students, many of whom did not have a computer or Internet access at home. Designed by Digital Millennial Consulting, with support from Microsoft and Qualcomm Inc., the project has expanded to cover more school districts in North Carolina and more math classes at Southwest.

Administrators decided to try the new technology in math classes because that is an area in which students faced difficulty, said Kathy Spencer, superintendent for Onslow County schools. Also, math has relevance in other areas of study. 

“Math is always an area that we want to increase our students’ skills because it’s an area where there’s a lot of application in the science, technology and engineering fields. And that has tended to be a big focus nationally and internationally,” she said.

With Project K-Nect, students use smartphones – cellphones with extra computing ability – to communicate with each other as they solve problems. First, they videotape themselves solving a problem, then they post the video to a blog. Students having trouble with a problem can consult the blog and see how their classmates solved it.

One advantage of this process is that the students do not have to wait a day for help or feedback. Another is that the process really helps them understand the material.

“What I’ve seen in these students since we started this project is the more they create these videos, the more they understand this algebra and they’re able to teach it.  And that’s when they actually know it,” said Southwest High School teacher Suzette Kliewer, who has been involved in Project K-Nect since its inception.

While many students were excited about taking a math class that would require them to use a phone, Taylor Scott wasn’t so sure. “I always hated math,” explained the Southwest senior. “I really didn’t know if I wanted to be in the smartphone thing because it meant more work, more math, and I was not really looking forward to that.”

But she quickly changed her mind. “It really helped me to like math a lot more and now it’s my favorite subject and my highest grade,” she said.

Kliewer sees similar enthusiasm from other students. “The vast majority like it because it’s a device that kids use today, they’ve just grown up with it, and they’re able to actually use it in the classroom,” she said.

In fact, the school cannot accommodate all of the students who want to take the smartphone classes.

“Parents are very interested in getting their children involved in that project now,” Spencer noted. “We don’t have the capacity for everyone.”

But have there been abuses? In general, cellphones are not considered assets to education. According to a 2009 study by Common Sense Media, a nonprofit media watchdog, more than 65 percent of the teens surveyed said they had firsthand knowledge of students using cellphones to cheat, either by texting friends for answers or storing notes for use during an exam.

Kliewer said there have been very few problems in her classroom.

“The phones have a monitoring system on them, and so like when students take a test or a quiz, they’re not allowed to have the phones out. And before we even begin using the smartphones, the students are informed of what’s called the acceptable use policy.  And we go over it and it’s very strict and it explains to them that if they’re caught cheating, if they’re caught taking a picture of the test and sending it to someone, something like that, then there’s some severe consequences to that,” she said.

Other teachers are interested in using technology in their classrooms. Zach Van Duzer, a middle-school math teacher at St. Malachy Parish School in Brownsburg, is one. In his student teaching, he observed a math teacher using smartphones as quick-response tools -- students would enter an answer to a problem and he could see immediately who got it right or wrong.

Van Duzer would like to use the phones for more complicated tasks as well. “I think that it would bring education to a different level.  It allows students to be able to do things that they wouldn’t be able to just by sitting and writing in a notebook.  They could use it to graph. They could use it to research things.  It’s almost like a mini-laptop that they can carry around with them really easily,” he said.

Van Duzer also believes that students would eventually learn to use the smartphones for the single purpose of helping each other with classwork.

“I think after a while the novelty of it would go away and it would just be used for what it’s supposed to be used for and not for games and music and all that,” he said.

Van Duzer and Kliewer agreed that technology can be a vital tool in helping students understand information. Since Project K-Nect started in 2008, its students have achieved proficiency in their courses at rates greater than non-participating students. For example, in 2008-09, more than 90 percent of Project K-Nect Algebra 1 students achieved proficiency on end-course assessments, compared to 70 percent of Algebra 1 students in their district and 68 percent in the state.

“It’s opened up what we call the learning community in the classroom,” Spencer said.  “The students have really soared. They have taken what started off as being just Algebra 1, and now they’re using that same process all the way through their calculus class.”

Assistant editor Ellen Flood, 14, and reporters Sophia Mathioudakis, 12, and Patrick Naremore, 12, contributed to this story.

Copyright 2011 Y-Press