School administrators in one Florida county have given teachers permission to read student's text messages if they think their students are up to no good, MyFOXTampaBay.com reports...I don't know or care why students seem not to be able to function without touching their phones. I just take them, in accordance with school/district policy, and give them to the appropriate vice principal.
Teachers can check the cell phone for what was written, as well as photos taken if they think inappropriate pictures were snapped of unsuspecting students or that test questions were photographed, according to MyFOXTampaBay.com.
Saturday, May 24, 2008
You Text In Class? Teachers Can Look
Hopefully this will motivate you to put your freakin' phone away when you're not supposed to be touching it.
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6 comments:
Seems like a violation of privacy to me... But then again, students never had much of that at school, anyways.
I don't know if you read this story, but it seems that one of our local high schools-highly acclaimed in the Top 100 Schools in America, has a serious problem with IPOD's being used to download powerpoints onto flash drives which were later accessed during testing. And this is the SECOND time this has happened. Electronic devices are being used to cheat. And it's happening everywhere. Here's the story:
http://www.myfoxdfw.com/myfox/pages/News/Detail?contentId=6615762&version=2&locale=EN-US&layoutCode=VSTY&pageId=3.8.1
One of my buddies solved this problem in a fashion I found ingenious. He has a laptop equipped for Bluetooth -- and he set it up so that he could pick up transmissions in his classroom. Students became most disturbed when he began including phrases from their just sent text messages in his lecture -- and the problem was solved in a matter of two days.
If I were more of a techie, I'd do the same thing.
I agree with you about confiscating the phones. I actually don't bother kids about their phones if they don't bother me. A few weeks ago, a kid actually answered his phone, a huge no-no, and started speaking Chinese in my English class, compounding the offense. I took the phone away and left it in the dean's office.
But even if your district suggests turning them over to administration, a lot depends on what sort of follow-up the administration provides. If yours, like mine, just has them come pick them up at the end of the day, it hardly seems worth it. I think parents should be required to pick them up, so as to maximize the inconvenience of defying the rules.
Our administrators assign a detention for at least the first offense, and the punishment only increases for subsequent violations.
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