Cell Phones In High School – Passing Notes In The Computer Age

Students using cell phones in high school has become a hot-button issue as of late, often pitting parents against teachers and school administrations.

On the one side is an issue of child safety. In today’s high tech world, parents on the whole feel a lot safer knowing their child has instant access to a cell phone in case of an emergency.

They also feel better knowing that they can contact their child at anytime and find out where they are and what they are up to. And this isn’t a small amount of parents who believe this. Over 25 percent of all teens in America (and 66 per cent of cell phone users) are teens of high school and college age.

The cell phone has become a powerful parenting tool in an age dominated by instant person-to- person communications. It has also become a symbol of status for teens to own their own cell phone, and some research has shown that cellular phone “addiction” has even chipped in to help curb teen smoking by as much as 10 per cent.

Teens use their cell phones to keep in contact with their friends; play games, and even for taking snapshots on their camera phones to be shared with friends and family later on.

But there is a dark side of teens using cellular phones in high school that more often than not pits parents of teens and the teens themselves against the schools they attend.

The main culprit: students using high tech cheating in ways that has left school boards and administrations struggling to keep up.

Aside from the usual reasons for not wanting a cellular phone in a high school or college classroom, there’s the incessant noise pollution and gabbing that comes with having your own cell phone and the annoying ring tones that always seem to strike exactly when an instructor is in the middle of a lesson, which disrupts the class and wastes everyone’s time.

More important than that, though, is the thought that students may be getting away with some real high-tech, James Bond-style cheating.

According to an article written by Laurie Fox of the Dallas Morning News, more and more students using cellular phones in high school are using them for one thing – cheating.

In its simplest form, cellular phone cheating is simply one person storing formulas and definitions in their cell phone. One doesn’t need a built in memo or notepad for this; these crib notes can be stored in the address section of a cellular phone for easy retrieval later.

More advanced versions can include text messaging answers back and forth between classmates and students outside of the classroom. Let’s face it, a student could conceivably text message anyone in the country and get the answers they needed.

And it doesn’t stop there.

According to Fox’s article, the University of Maryland recently caught a ring of cell phone cheaters when they used their cell phones to contact a student outside the classroom with access to an exam answer key.

In high school or middle school, where answer keys are usually not thrown up on the internet for students to check over their work, this could happen in other ways. For example, using a cellular phone camera to take snap shots of a test paper before other classes take the test, effectively giving them a “heads up” on what to study for.

As technology moves forward, this situation is probably going to get worse, not better. PDA cell phones give students instant access to scores of files and computer software at their fingertips; indeed PDF versions of entire textbooks can be stored on handheld mobile devices and accessed with a few simple clicks of a button.

The next generation of cellular phones will also have complete online ability, allowing posting and downloading from websites, the ability to search the internet through search engines, as well as full e-mail capabilities.

As a result, many school administrations have been swift to curb the tide of unwanted cell phone use in school by banning the devices outright.

In other instances, students may be permitted to bring them to school, but they must be turned off during their time at school and kept out of site until the end of the day. Failure to do so can often result in reprimands, but more often than not it ends in confiscation of the cell phone for the day or a suitable amount of time.

School administrations see this as a balance between letting teens have and carry their cellular phones, and curbing potentially explosive amounts of cheating and distractions.

One thing is for sure. With the number of teens who own cell phones expected to double in the next few years as more parents turn to them as a way to be available at all times for their kids and more teens find ways to fund their own cellular phone habits, this is an issue that is going to continue growing and schools will have to continue to monitor. The only answer, it seems, is vigilance.

Also see; teen cell phones.

Author Notes:

Bill Schnarr contributes and publishes news editorial to http://www.cell-phones-n-plans.com. A cellular phone industry resource that features service plan comparisons, cell phone reviews and articles.