MOBILE PHONES WITH STUDENTS

Mobile phones come in hand for school studies

By Staff Reporter

MANY despline teachers or headteachers have ordered that students and pupils must keep their mobile phones switched off at school and others have told pupils to leave them at home.

The education of researcher at the University of Dar es Salaam believe it is time that phone bans because mobile phones can be a powerful learning aid.

One colleagues, Rajabu Soud have reached this conclusion after studying the consequences of allowing pupils in ten secondary to use either their own phones or the new generation of smart phones in lessons.

During the five month experiment, the pupils of 15 to 17 years old used the phones for a wide range of educational purposes including creating short movies, setting homework, recording a teacher reading poem and timing experiment with the phone stop watches.

The smart phones which could connect to the internet also allowed students to access revision website, log into the school email system or transfer electronic files between school and home.

The research involved 400 pupils in schoo of cambridge share, St. Marry`s and Tanganyika Internation School, all in Dar es Salaam region.

"At the start of the study even pupils were often surprised at the though that mobil phones could be used for learning.

"After their hands on experience almost all pupils said they had enjoyed the project and felt more motivated,"Colleagues Soud said.

Some teachers also had to reassess their views even though staff who took part were already champions of new technology in their schools.

Students like mobiles and they know how to use them, using this technology gives them more freedom to express themselves without needing to be constantly supervised," one teacher say.

Other teachers found that pupils who lacked confidence gained most from the project, however they recognised that greater use of mobile phones in school could prove problematical.

Increased temptation to steal phones was one worry, other teacher say that: "I though, well, four of these smartphones are going to end up on may be tomorrow".

That fear turned out to be misplaced a few teachers remained concerned that phones could prove a distraction for some students.

"Allowing pupils to access school emails via mobiles would also pose data security risks if passwords were shared", they say.

But pupils now days come to school equipped with not mobile phone only also MP3 Players and portable games.

Many teachers worries that when student uses a phones at school their are understandable. So teachers unions have similar fears and have supported phones bans in school.

While the enventual aim should be to lift blanket bans on phones we do not recommend immediate, who school change.

Instead we believe that teachers, student and the wider community should work together to develop policies that will enable this powerful new learning tool to be used safely.

We hope that in future, mobile phone use will be as natural as using any other technology in school.

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