Who You Calling A Jesse?

Very interesting news out of Toronto that the public school board is looking at banning mobile phones for a number of legitimate reasons. I do agree with the a lot of the rationale but you can hardly blame students for their inappropriate use of the technology. How often have you been interrupted in the theatre? In a meeting? While eating at a fancy restaurant? Adults aren’t exactly setting a good example.

Perhaps it is how the article is written (I don’t see a pro-active approach mentioned, more just a knee-jerk ban) but I think it would be neat if the school board took the approach of requiring those caught using the phones at inappropriate times to attend a special class that will talk about how to use technology responsibly. They could do the same for those caught bullying or harassing other students on facebook or other sites.

By banning the mobile the school board is missing an opportunity to use the technology in the learning environment. If they required students phone numbers they could send them SMS for a whole host of things, provide other content and applications, maybe even negotiate a better package deal for their students. All the students in the public school board would have some serious buying power to influence change in the steeply priced service provider market.

That is the sort of the thing we are looking at here at Waterloo, maybe we should make a little more noise about what we are doing as an example in embracing technology instead of shutting it off.