Are smartphones the future of classroom learning or a threat to it?

Last week, while waiting for my first pumpkin latte of the season, I ran into an old neighbor who quizzed me on standard school policies on confiscating student phones in class.

Her son’s middle school math teacher took away his iPhone because he texted in class. Class ran over, the teacher was deep in conversation with another student and her son didn’t have time to wait to retrieve his phone as he had to get to a test in his next class. At the end of the school day, the boy couldn’t find the teacher. So, he couldn’t call his mom to tell her lacrosse practice was cancelled. She wasn’t home so her son was locked out.

Yes, her son was wrong, the mom said. But she contends schools need a clear policy on returning phones to avoid stranding students without any way to reach parents.

Today, my son came home and told me about class time lost to a standoff between a student and teacher. Fed up with a student’s repeated use of his phone in class, the teacher threatened to take the phone and keep it all week. The student countered the teacher could not do that. So, the teacher called in the department head to affirm his authority over phones in the classroom.

At the Southern K-14 Education Innovation Summit Friday, Savannah State University President Cheryl Davenport Dozier talked about her classroom experience with using phones to improve student performance.

While her students would pull out two sheets of paper and dutifully jot down a few notes, they told Dozier they never looked back over their handwritten notes.

So where would you look at notes, she asked them. On their phones, the told her.

So, Dozier told them to pull out their phones and record their notes on them. But Dozier said she still would walk behind students during the class and ask them to show her what they had written to discourage social media forays.

“I tell students they all come into my class with an A-plus. If they use the time in class to text, there goes that A,” she said.

Dozier said teachers have to meet kids where they are, and kids today are on their smartphones and tablets.

Dozier cited her 5-year-old grandson who clamors to use her iPhone and iPad and knows how to download apps, reassuring his wary grandmother, “It was free." Her grandson, Dozier, said, "knew how to spell ‘free’ before his name."

I am interested in knowing what your school policies are on smartphones in class, and whether teachers are obligated to return them as soon as class ends. I'd also like to know if anyone integrates cell phones into the class work without losing kids to texting and Internet trawling.