The media in BC has tried to make hay out of an incident at a school in Port Hardy, BC [map] where a high school principal bought an illegal cell phone jamming device to prevent students from texting and surfing the web on their phones during class. [READ] After discovering why their cell phones suddenly stopped working at school, the students at this school confronted the school administration and informed them that cell phone jamming is in violation of Federal telecommunication regs. The principal of the school explained his reasoning for the jamming – he felt his confiscation campaign was not successful in discouraging students from using cell phones in class and felt that the school was suffering. In my opinion, he did the right thing. Federal regulations be damned. It leads to a bigger discussion about the role of technology in public education. Technology provides amazing new ways for kids to not pay attention in school.

1. Cell Phones
   

    

   I have heard some horror stories from colleagues of mine who teach about kids using cell phones to cheat. The kids’ excuse: they use their cellphone as a calculator. I’ll concede that but anyone who is tech savvy knows that a modern smart phone can save and display documents (think cheat sheets) and look stuff up online in the middle of a test. Is that fair? No. I think it’s completely reasonable to ask students to not use cellphones in class. Academic honesty needs to be a foundation in public education. Cell phones are also distracting. Just as my adult colleagues get distracted by their BlackBerries when they are supposed to be paying attention in meetings, young learners can be distracted by mobile games on their phones, texting their friends or using MSN Messenger on their phone.

    

2. The Web
   

   There are two issues with the web: academic shortcuts and the role of social media. There are plenty of ways to shortcut research for a school paper online. You can pay someone in a developing country to write it for you. You can cut and paste vast tracts from other peoples’ published work, Wikipedia and/or blogs. Cheating on term papers with the assistance of the Internet is a trend as old as the Internet itself. There are businesses that thrive on exposing plagiarism from the web for teachers marking assignments.

   Then there’s social media. High school had enough drama when I was young but social media has made it easier than ever for teenagers to do shitty things to one another. Find a scandalous picture of the head cheerleader? Publish it online so everyone in the school gets to see it. Think someone is a jerk? Twitter about it. It used to be that the high school drama soapbox was limited to the number of people in your personal network. Social media allows angry teens to broadcast grief with the click of a button.

    

3. MP3 Players
   

    

   Many of the things you can say about cell phones can be said about MP3 players. I have an iPod Touch, for example. Yes, it’s an MP3 player but it essentially does everything the iPhone does except make calls. That means I can embed text file cheat sheets onto it and check them out while pretending to browse my track listings during an exam. I also don’t buy the fact that kids can pay full attention to what’s going on in class while they’ve got a headphone in one ear.

Cell Phone Jamming Technology

To loop back around on this cell phone jamming issue. The technology works by broadcasting on a frequency that cancels out cell phone signals. It’s a form of radio jamming, to put it simply. HowStuffWorks.com has a good article explaining the technology. You can pick up these devices on the Internet for between $150 and $400. The specific regulations regarding cellphone jamming are from the Radiocommunication Act of Canada.