Guiding Students in the Effective Use of Mobile Technology a Better Course of Action

In recent weeks, the Victorian Government announced that from Term 1 2020, the use of mobile phones will be banned in all government primary and secondary schools. Victorian Education Minister, James Merlino, made the announcement with the intention to “help reduce distraction, tackle cyberbullying and improve learning outcomes”.

Mr Merlino went on to say: “This will remove a major distraction from our classrooms, so that teachers can teach, and students can learn in a more focused, positive and supported environment. Half of all young people have experienced cyberbullying, by banning mobiles we can stop it at the school gate.”

While I applaud Mr Merlino’s efforts, I recognise that he has not responded to numerous requests by educators to provide the research and evidence leading to this decision. As an educator myself for some 30 years, I am certainly aware of the impact mobile phones have had on the learning environment and teenage life in general, however, there are a number of reasons to be cautious with such blanket bans.

Neil Selwyn, a distinguished research professor at Monash University, suggests “there is a body of evidence that shows a large overlap between cyberbullying and traditional forms of bullying, which would not then follow that digital devices are somehow causing these behaviours”. In my experience, I think it is a mistake to argue that a ban will lead to lower rates of cyberbullying. Bullying is about relationships, not technology.

Professor Selwyn also noted that cyberbullying most often takes place outside of school hours and premises. This issue, he explained, is best handled in close collaboration with children, adolescents and their parents.

Ideally, guiding and supporting teens to learn to self-manage their mobile technology effectively, including the use of apps that track the time a teen is on their phone and enable the teen to set up alerts that remind them of their goal to be ‘offline’, is certainly a better course of action. Nudging a human being towards choosing productive behaviour rather than compliance strategies (like bans) that do not translate to their lives out of school or post-school lives will yield a better outcome.

St Catherine’s prides itself on providing students with relatively small class sizes of 12 to 17 girls, enabling a positive student to teacher ratio thus enhancing opportunity for greater individual feedback, increasing engagement through class discussion and certainly lifting teacher visibility over the learning environment. Using one’s phone in class, without permission, would almost be impossible for our students without the device being ‘spotted’ by a teacher. In a class of 28 to 30 students, experienced in many other schools today, I suggest the potential for misuse with a mobile phone would be exacerbated.

Last Friday, I enjoyed spending a lesson with Mr Stephen Brown and our VCE Physics students. Mr Brown was teaching frequency and the pattern of wave motion, and had set up a demonstration to show standing waves on a piece of elastic string. The waves were oscillating at about 70 hertz, which is too fast for the human eye to discern, so Heidi Tokatlidis and Lucy Gray, using their mobile phones on the slow motion video setting, were able to see the individual vibrations of the elastic. This helped confirm the behaviour of the elastic string and the pattern of the wave motion.

Empowering classroom teachers to use the tools of technology, in collaboration with students, not only contributes to a positive classroom environment enriched by technology, it teaches students positive use and active participation in lessons. In the classroom, we can tailor the learning environment to suit the needs of the students and enhance their understanding with technology.

Empowering teachers to use technology in collaboration with students, contributes to a positive classroom environment.

Currently, mobile phones are not permitted in the Junior School, and in Years 7 and 8 and the girls must store their phones in their lockers unless requested to bring them to class for a specific activity. For the students in our care, the introduction of bans, restrictions, constraints and rules are a double-edged sword. It gives them boundaries, certainty, rituals and traditions, teaches them how to live in a community and, at times, offers up a great source of irritation that children and adolescents rage against passionately.

St Catherine’s aims to carefully manage the use of smart technology and this includes the role modelling of good manners, giving people your full attention, and avoiding distraction through self-awareness and self-management. These are not new concepts, but indicators of humanity that have stood the test of time.

Michelle Carroll

Mrs Michelle Carroll