Kids Spend Plenty Of Time With Gadgets In Class
from the and-so-it-goes... dept
It's no surprise that kids have gadgets like mobile phones and MP3 players. However, it sounds like teachers and school administrators have no clue how much students are using these gadgets during class. Of course, most of the article is anecdotal, where students say they use their mobile phones, PDAs and MP3 players during class all the time - sometimes to cheat, sometimes to chat, and sometimes just to do something that's less boring than whatever it is they're supposed to be doing. Teachers and school administrators all insist that everything is under control - even when they don't even know what this whole "text messaging" thing is. While I'm sure more gadget-playing activity is going on than the adults realize, I'm also not entirely convinced it's that horrible. Kids always find ways to do these sorts of things, and it's the teacher's responsibility to get them focused on learning and not on throwing away their education. I'm sure if I were in high school again, I'd be just as bad as most of these kids - but I'm not convinced my ability to learn would suffer. I can recall plenty of classes where I did my share of goofing off, and still came away doing fine (and learning quite a bit). This is just a new technology and a new generation of goofing off.
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