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Should Students Use Cell Phones During Class Time?

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If you were to drop in on most any American high school these days, what would you see? Cell phones. Lots of them. Virtually all students have one and it 's typical to see them tapping away or listening to music through their ear buds not just in the hallways during the five minutes between classes, but also in the classroom, at every opportunity the teacher gives them. Most schools allow students to have cell phones for safety as a reaction to the Littleton, Colorado high school shooting incident of 1999. Apart from emergency situations, most schools don 't officially allow students to use cell phones during class time. However, when the teacher is busy helping out another student or writing on the board, out come the phones as …show more content…

Many teachers seem to accept this reasoning, little knowing about the data on multitasking and its deleterious effects on concentration and the ability to think clearly. Two years ago, for example, Peter Bregwan wrote in the Harvard Business Review Blog Network that multitasking can reduce productivity by as much as 40%, increase stress and cause a 10 point fall in IQ. But thinking clearly doesn 't seem to be one of the principal objectives in our high schools -- for the teachers or the administrative staff, much less for the students themselves. After all, this is a generation that is used to being entertained. Attention spans are short. During a block period -- which is two regular 40-minute periods back-to-back -- some teachers cajole their students to do some work during the first hour, and then promise them time to do whatever they want at the end, just to keep them from disturbing others. In some cases, schools have actually embraced cell phones and incorporated them into their teaching. Teachers argued over phone use in class room saying that they give students a chance to collaborate with each other, or connect with peers in other countries, They can be used for high-tech alternatives to boring classroom lectures, letting kids take part in interactive assignments like classroom

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