Teachers begin using cell phones for class lessons — AP: Yahoo! Tech

The students in the article are like mine — they love their phones. My students think they would love to use them at school. They don’t realize that they’d have to learn to use them in a way that helps them learn. Adults have had to learn (or still have to learn) how to use the technology in a way that doesn’t cause problems. It was interesting to watch this learning happen as I went through college and grad school.

Eventually, students won’t crave the use of their phones in class, but I am excited about the thought of the first time I’m allowed by my district to start including such common technology in the classroom.

Update 24 June 2010: My district has added portable electronics to the list of things I can “request approval” of for a lesson. I just have to design a lesson and fill out the form, and then the Director of Instruction for my building signs off on it. Now I have two choices: quickly include it in a lesson as a gimmick, or spend some real time thinking about the most authentic and effective use of personal tech to enhance lessons I teach.

“Educational Origami is a blog, and a wiki, about the integration of ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) into the classroom, this is one of the largest challenges that [Andrew Churches] feel[s] we as teachers face. It’s about 21st Century Learning and 21st Century Teaching.”

I’ll be wading throug it this summer. On the surface it looks like it may be too much at once for most classroom teachers.