Laws create outlaws. The moment you’ve banned cell phones in schools is the moment you admit that you’d prefer teachers to police student rather than teach them.

15 years ago I was living in China and tried to share some sites where student reporters were reporting on the Winter Olympics in Vancouver, but the Great Filter Wall of China blocked the site. I wrote this, and created a little poster to go with it:

Now here is the thing… I chose to move to a country where a lot of sites get blocked. I can’t imagine what it’s like for teachers in the ‘free world’ that have their own school districts do this to them!

If you are in a school where filters filter learning, here is a little poster for you to hang up in your front entrance:

That was a different time, when people thought they could shield students from social media sites just by filtering them at school. But how far have we really progressed if what we are trying to do now is ban phones? Are we going to ban their smart watches too? Their smart glasses? Are we going to make classrooms electronic free zones? Oh, wait, why don’t we just ban their laptops too?

Gary Stager recently shared this on LinkedIn:

“Every media outlet and social media feed blames screens for all societal ills.(1) Go ahead, get the screens out of schools just like you did with books, musical instruments, & play. Just keep standardized testing and football! We have entered edtech winter. #discuss
(1) real or imagined”

I commented: “Come to Luddite High, where we prepare you for the previous century.”

I find it hard to believe we are here again. Going back to 15 years ago, I wrote, ‘Choose Your Battle‘, where I said,

Filters that also filter learning -or- High expectations about appropriate use?

Banning POD’s -or- High expectations about appropriate use?

Teaching without technology -or- High expectations about appropriate use?

And

So which battle will it be? Do we make classrooms a war zone? A battle zone to keep technology out? Or do we make it a learning zone? A place where we close the gap between digital distractions and digital classroom tools?

And shared this image:

Sarcasm aside, the point is that filtering and banning are not the solutions we need to be considering. What we need to teach is that there is a time and a place for tools in schools.

More recently I shared:

“With great responsibility comes great power”… that’s the reverse of the Spiderman quote, “With great power comes great responsibility”, and a teacher, John Sarte at Inquiry Hub, uses this to explain to students that while we give them a lot of time to work independently (a lot of responsibility) that comes with a lot of power.“

This applies to technology in the classroom too. We expect students to be responsible with their technology use. We give them the power to choose when it’s appropriate, we put the power in their hands… but when they show they are not responsible, when the abuse the power, we then become more responsible and take away their power.

When a Grade 9 student is working independently and I walk by them scrolling on their phone, I have a conversation with them about how they could be using their time more effectively and and ask them to put their phone away. When a I see a Grade 11 or 12 doing the same thing, I might or might not have the same conversation. If a kid hands everything in on time, shows pride in all their work, contributes well in class and in groups, and is not using their phone during a lesson or presentation… well then so what if when I walk by they happen to be taking a break? But if it’s a student who still hasn’t figured out how to get good work done on time, I’m definitely having the same conversation I had with the Grade 9. 

It’s a whole other story when a class is in session. At that point their needs to be a culture and expectation that the phone is either something being used for learning, as permitted by the teacher, or it’s put away. But to ban it… to remove it from schools… to have to police keeping them out of classrooms altogether, is a luddite style draconian policy that sets us back years if not decades. Schools need to be, “A place where we close the gap between digital distractions and digital classroom tools.” Not a place where we shelter students from tools they will be using everywhere else in their lives.