Mobile Phones in Schools As A Lifesaving Tool

Guest post by Erik Endress, Founder & CEO ShareWith911.com

I met Lisa Nielsen, creator of The Innovative Educator blog, a year ago after learning of her stance on enabling students to use mobile phones in school as a learning device.

Proponents will say that you can't let kids use their phones because they might use them to take photos or video or text. I want them, and their teachers, to do just that when their school goes into lockdown, when their is an active shooter in their school, when they are witness to criminal behavior and anytime they need help.

School redesign as a community project-based learning challenge

“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

-Albert Einstein 

If you’ve ever complained about the way things are in schools today, now’s your chance to stop talking and start acting by participating in the Reinventing School Challenge.  The challenge is a program that begins with a simple mission: Encourage life-long learning, promote alternative learning environments and equip learners with 21st Century skills. It takes a fresh and different approach to school reform in the following ways.

1. Inviting the whole community to get involved.
2. Giving the community a framework to collaborate and fashion solutions for their own school communities.
3. Providing a platform to present, share and celebrate what's possible and what really works.

The program uses design, collaboration, technology, play and social media to engage and empower young people to effect positive change in their school community. It starts by encouraging participants to reframe problems as opportunities. Ask beautiful questions, spark imagination, provide a framework to research, generate ideas and rapidly prototype and test design solutions. Doing anything less, results in remaining passive observers, making slow progress, losing interest and leaving all the work policy makers and Government. If they fail to deliver, we will simply blame them and much will stay the same.

This new Design Thinking Challenge runs for 8 weeks from now until November 7th and again in March. It uses design, collaboration, technology, play and social media to engage and empower young people effect positive change in their school community. It encourages life-long learning, promotes alternative learning environments and equips participants with 21st Century skills.

Disorganized Sports + Unstructured Play

When asking children: 

What is your favorite part of school?

It is not uncommon to get this answer:  

Recess!!!

I still like to play :)

Sadly, in schools today, recess is on it's way toward extinction.  On a parenting group I belong to, student's back to school schedules were shared.  Sadly, very few included time for recess. Yet at a recent conference I listened to brain researcher John Medena  who shared that activity, movement, and exercise is crucial for boosting brain power.  Not only does play make you smarter, this article points to play being a great way to alleviate ADD / ADHD symptoms. Unfortunately, educators are in a state of panic in our test prep obsessed education system, no longer able to think clearly about what is truly best for our children. 

If today's teachers and administrators had the opportunity to pull themselves away from the worksheets and bubblesheets they would find that play is an essential component of student success as pointed to in the article Can We Play by Psychologist David Elkin.  In the article Elkin shares that recess is already extinct in more than 30,000 U.S. schools that have eliminated recess to make more time for academics and that children’s time spent outdoors has fallen 50 percent since the 1990s.

If School Was Causing Your Child’s ADD / ADHD Would You Remove Him?

During a recent conversation with friends and family, the topic of ADHD / ADD came up and I shared my belief that this is not a disease that should result in people being drugged, but instead a personality type (like mine!) that should be honored.  My friends and family looked at me stunned.  They wondered how an educator like me didn’t know better as this new epidemic was clearly documented as a disease.  I then found out that a few of those among us had been drugged or had been responsible for drugging their children.  They were offended by my words! Fortunately, I'm used to this.  

School is Not School. A Place Where The Community, Not The School, Provides Learning.

I recently shared three radical ideas to transform education without school.  In it, I shared Linda Dobson’s timeless article, When the School Doors Close:  A Midsummer Night’s Dream where she outlines the transformation that would occur if schools ceased to exist and instead we engaged in community-centered learning.  Rather than compulsory, age-based facilities, with community learning people choose to attend and learn about topics of deep personal passion and interest.  There would be many options available to individuals of any age.  The community takes ownership and responsibility of the learning and well-being of others.  As my wise friend Jeff Pulver recently said, “The only difference between a dream and reality is making it happen.”  

There is a community that is doing just that.  I learned about this community from Arif Hidayat.  Although we aren’t the same age, live on opposite ends of the earth, and don’t speak the same language we are connected by our passion to  provide children with learning opportunities that best fit their needs. Through the wonders of Google Translate we have been able to engage in an ongoing dialogue where he has shared stories about two Learning Communities in Indonesia. 

What's Popular This Week on The Innovative Educator

Here’s the roundup of what's been popular on The Innovative Educator blog this week. Below you’ll see my top weekly posts along with the number of pageviews in the past 7 days. I hope there's something that looks of interest to you.  If it does, check it out. If you’re so inspired leave a comment.

What Parents Really Want to Tell Teachers: What Yo... Sep 15, 2011, 37 comments  2,947 Pageviews

Parents Take Issue with Advice of 'Super Teacher' ... Sep 11, 2011, 28 comments  2,679 Pageviews

Make and Publish Books for Free Using A Cell Phone... Sep 14, 2011   1928 Pageviews

Top Ten Ed Tech Issues This School Year Sep 13, 2011, 1 comment   1870 Pageviews

25 Incredible Assistive Technologies Sep 5, 2011, 1 comment   1672 Pageviews

The Best Teacher Evaluation System I’ve Heard of! Jan 9, 2011, 22 comments   1450 Pageviews

8 Real Ways Facebook Enriched Ms. Schoening’s Firs... Jul 15, 2010, 19 comments    1202 Pageviews