Court Upholds School Ban on Cell Phones

A ban on cellphones in the nation's largest school system was upheld Tuesday by a state appeals court. The WSJ reports.

"City lawyers argued that education officials had the right to make policy decisio -- "the kind government officials make all the time" -- about devices students are allowed to have at school.

The state Supreme Court's Appellate Division agreed. It said that nothing about the ban interferes with any of the rights claimed by the parents, nor does it prevent students and their parents from communicating before and after school.

New York has more than 1,400 schools and 1.1 million students.

"We are extremely disappointed", said Norman Siegel, a lawyer for the parents and students. "We strongly believe the ban is unconstitutional and illegal, and we will not rest until the prohibition is reversed."

Mobile phones to teach Math to Girls

Nokia, together with the The Department of Education and non-profit organisation Mindset Network, has released M4Girls. [via
ITWeb]

"The pilot project uses Nokia 6300 mobile phones loaded with educational material to help improve the mathematics performance of Grade 10 girl learners in two different schools.

... The South African Department of Education is on a drive to improve proficiency in key subjects like maths among students from historically disadvantaged backgrounds, in particular girls, who tend to perform worse than their male counterparts in this subject."

Watch out! Thai exam cheat triggers phone-watch ban

Thai students will be barred from wearing watches in national university entrance exams this weekend after a student was caught cheating using a mobile phone wrist watch, Education Ministry officials said on Wednesday, reports Reuters.

"Photographs of the phone watch would be sent to exam centers around the country and students would have to rely on wall clocks, they said.

The ban followed invigilators catching a student receiving text messages on his phone watch during a national exam in Bangkok last weekend.

The novel method of cheating was a reflection of the difficulty of earning a university place in a country where some university engineering or medicine departments might take only one in 100 candidates."

Links to related articles on South Korean Students and SMS Cheating.

New York Schools Give Students Free Cellphones in Pilot Reward Program

When students in select New York schools score good grades, they won’t just be getting the kudos of teachers and parents -- they will also be rewarded with talk time, ringtones and games for cellphones given to them free. Digital Journal reports.

In a pilot program affecting 2,500 students in Manhattan and Brooklyn, education officials are giving away Samsung flip-phones to seven participating middle schools. Each student receives a free phone with 130 prepaid minutes.

When a student does well at school with good behaviour or impressive grades, they can earn “points” that can be redeemed for talk time, ringtones, games and other downloads.

The Million Motivation Campaign’s cellphone project will also allow principals and teachers to text-message students to alert them to school events, tests or study tips.

... But there’s a small wrinkle to the Million plan. New York has banned cellphone use in schools, so the Million phones can only be used after class."

As campus shootings make headlines, students still slow to embrace cell phone alert systems

The massacre at Virginia Tech last year sent colleges nationwide scrambling to improve how they get alerts to students during crises on campus. One solution: Text messages sent to cell phones.

But while hundreds of campuses have adopted text alerts, most students are not embracing the system - even in an age when they consider their mobile phones indispensable, reports the Associated Press.

"Omnilert, a Northern Virginia company that provides an emergency alert system called e2Campus to more than 500 campuses, reports an average enrollment rate among students, faculty and staff of just 39 percent.

Across the country, colleges 'are really struggling with how to get the enrollment numbers up,'' said Steven Healey, Princeton University's public safety director and an expert on campus security.

The University of Missouri's Columbia campus tried a giveaway - students who signed up for the alerts were entered in a drawing for an iPod Nano - in hopes of improving its rate. Just 15 percent of the roughly 28,000 students have requested text message alerts or cell-phone calls during emergencies.

... Campus safety experts point to several factors to explain the lack of interest among students, including feelings of invincibility and reluctance to give out personal information.

Others hesitate to pay the fees - generally a matter of pennies - that some cell phone providers charge to send and receive texts. Colleges generally pay $1 to $4 per enrolled student to the companies that set up the alerts."

Graduates 'sms' in job l3tt3rs

According to The Sydney Morning Herald graduates are using text message abbreviations and gaming slang in their job applications, prompting alarmed employers and education institutions to run special courses in written communication.

Cell phone college class opens in Japan

Japanese already use cell phones to shop, read novels, exchange e-mail, search for restaurants and take video clips. Now, according to the Associated Press, they can take a university course.

"Cyber University, the nation's only university to offer all classes only on the Internet, began offering a class on mobile phones Wednesday on the mysteries of the pyramids.

For classes for personal computers, the lecture downloads play on the monitor as text and images in the middle, and a smaller video of the lecturer shows in the corner, complete with sound.

The cell phone version, which pops up as streaming video on the handset's tiny screen, plays just the Power Point images.

... The cell phone lectures may be expanded to other courses but for now will be for the pyramids course, according to Cyber University, which offers about 100 courses, including ancient Chinese culture, online journalism and English literature.

Unlike the other classes, the one on cell phones will be available to the public for free, although viewers must pay phone fees."

ACLU warns High School about reading students' cell phone text messages

Students and parents at Mason High School, Ohio, have complained that administrators are confiscating cell phones and reading text messages "to determine if the students attended private parties off school grounds during the weekend." Middletown Journal reports.

The ACLU sent a letter to the principal at the High School, warning that the school"'s "current practice of seizing student cell phones and reading personal text messages was poor policy and unconstitutional".

School district spokeswoman Tracey Carson said if a student tries to hide something on the phone, that can send up a red flag to an administrator. She said students may get in trouble if there is pornography or any references to drugs or alcohol on the phone.

... The ACLU's Gamso said the complaints referred to administrators wanting to know what students were doing off school grounds. "Attendance at a private party that does not disrupt classes and does not occur on school grounds is none of the school's business. Private student social activities are issues for parents, not the school."

Vietnam. Students wear wigs wired with mobile phones to pass exams

Twenty-six teachers and education officials went on trial Monday in southern Vietnam for allegedly accepting bribes from more than 1,700 students to help them pass their graduation exams, a court official said, reports the China Post. Image left from the BBC.

"The defendants were charged with accepting bribes of $33,000 to illegally raise the scores of 1,740 high school students last year in Bac Lieu province, said court official Tran Van Khang.

Last year, Vietnam launched a campaign to clean up rampant cheating in education. Authorities broke up a ring in which more than 20 students each paid them up to S$3,125 for wigs and shirts that were wired to mobile phones, allowing them to cheat on their college entrance exams by calling in test questions and answers.

Hanoi police confiscated 50 mobile phones, 60 earphones, 150 SIM cards, eight shirts and five wigs during a raid in July last year."

Links to (the many) articles related to student cheating scandals

South Korea. Groups Set to Cure Mobile Phone Addicts

Korea already has a boot camp cure for Web obsession and now is conducting a program to help cure mobile phone addiction among the young, according to The Korea Times.

"A civic group called School Beautiful Movement with the help of Korea Agency for Digital Opportunity and Promotion (KADO) and SK Telecom, has launched a campaign to teach the youth proper cell phone use.

Twelve elementary, middle and high schools were selected for the pilot program Tuesday. "For the next two months, students of these schools will speak about their phone use, discuss the symptoms they experience when they are without a mobile phone, and consider proper use of the phones as consumers,'' the member said.

The schools will have cell phone lockers, where students voluntarily put their phones preventing their use during class time.

According to a survey by KADO on students aged between 14 and 19 in 2005, 90 percent had mobile phones; 38.2 percent sent more than 1,000 text messages per month; and 43.7 percent of teenagers had conversations with their friends through text messages during lectures."

Related: - A Boot Camp Cure for Web Obsession

Photo from pwynne.hostinguk.

Cell Phones and Text Message rewards to Encourage NY Students to Study

The mayor of New York City, Michael Bloomberg, has turned to the cellphone as a means of combatting school failures among disadvantaged African-American and Latino youths, according to the NY Times.

" In some 20 public New York schools, students will be offered a cellphone and those who get good grades will receive, via text messages, rewards such as concert and sporting events tickets and ringtones that are sponsored by businesses.

The program, which is expected to start in January with between 10,000 to 15,000 students, is the brainchild of Roland Fryer, an economist who oversees another financial reward scheme for good students.

The leaders of the program explained that studies showed the cellphone is the main communication tool among adolescents, and that to use them would be much more effective than posters or television advertising. "

[via MobHappy]

In New York City schools, considering cellphones as incentives

In New York City public schools, cellphones are considered contraband. But free cellphone airtime could be a reward for high-performing students if the city adopts the newest idea from the city Education Department's chief equality officer. The New York Times reports.

"That official, Roland Fryer, a Harvard economist who is leading the city's program to pay cash to some students who do well on standardized tests, told an undergraduate economics class at Harvard last month that his next proposal would include a plan to give cellphones to students, and reward those who do well with free minutes - an idea that is at odds with one of the city's most contentious school policies, the ban on students having cellphones in school"

Purdue to test the limits of text emergency alert messaging

Purdue University will conduct what is believed to be the first large-scale, real-world test of using text messaging to issue emergency alerts. [PhysOrg]

"The test, which will begin on Monday, Sept. 24, will involve more than 7,200 volunteers who will accept the test messages and respond so that researchers can track the actual time it takes to deliver messages to a mass audience.

"When we need to send an emergency message, time is the most critical factor. We have seen reports of messaging rates as low as 200 to 300 per minute in some environments, while we have some vendors making unbelievable claims of thousands per second,” Ksander says.

... Ksander says the results of the study will be shared with other universities and emergency planners after the results are calculated."

Stabbing on campus puts CU's text-message system to test

A stabbing incident Monday at CU Boulder was the first real test of the university's new emergency text messaging system reports The CW2.

"Junior Justin Kutner was sitting in class when his cell phone went off, letting him know he had a new test message. It read, in part, "Alert from CU PD, stabbing at UMC at 9:43. Suspect in custody." Kutner immediately told his professor and his 40 classmates what was going on.

... The text message went out about a half-hour after the incident started. University officials say they'll assess the system's performance and see what future improvements can be made.

The University launched the emergency text messaging system last week and so far only about 500 students have signed up. Campus officials say today's incident is a prime example of why everyone needs to take part.

The university also sent out an e-mail alert, about two hours after the incident."

Cell phones on campus make cutting the umbilical cord more difficult

The Olymian reports on how College kids and their parents are not letting go, as the connect through cell phones.

"... Cell phones are a godsend for parents of high schoolers. The "electronic leash," as some teens call it, assures that the kids have little excuse for not informing parents of their whereabouts. And mom and dad are quickly reachable if something goes awry.

But young adults in college are supposed to practice and prove their independence. All that contact, used the wrong way, can impede those goals, student affairs experts say.

"One mom mentioned that she calls her son to wake him up in the morning," said Sandy Waddell, assistant dean of students at Rockhurst University. "She said if she didn't, he might not make it to class. I told her I thought that was a bit over the top."

The cell phone no doubt can be a conduit in a close parent-child relationship. One thing is certain: Everyday contact between young adults and their parents is the new normal.

... In a study released earlier this year by the Pew Research Center, 82 percent of all 18- to 25-year-olds said they had talked to their parents in the past day."

NY City Council votes to let students carry cell phones to school

Parents who say their children need to bring cell phones to city schools have gotten a boost for their cause from the City Council, reports Newsday.

"The council passed a measure Wednesday that gives children the express right to carry cell phones to and from school. The measure didn't change a long-standing ban on cell phones inside school buildings in the nation's largest school system, but it could help buttress legal challenges to the policy or help force the education department to compromise and find a solution. "

New Oriental Announces Mobile Learning Project with Nokia in China

New Oriental Education and Technology Group Inc., the largest provider of private educational services in China, today announced that it has entered into an agreement with Nokia, to launch a mobile learning initiative that will give students access to select New Oriental course content via their mobile phones.

Under the one-year agreement, New Oriental will provide specially designed English language and test preparation course content for download on both the Mobiledu.cn website and New Oriental's online learning site Koolearn.com.

Mobile learning content will be available in selected new Nokia mobile phones with the educational programs pre-installed. Course content will be formatted as short sound bytes that users can listen to at their convenience. New Oriental and Nokia along with other parties will kointly promote the educational offering in the China market.

Press release

About Texting Teens

Now that texting has exploded in America, it's regarded as one of the current teen generation's inexplicable behaviors, like instant-messaging or spending hours on Facebook . The Washington Post reports.

... The explosion of this technology was inevitable, according to those who research adolescent behavior, because it provides a new tool for creating what teenagers always have wanted and needed -- distance from parents.

"It's a form of silent communication; they can do it whenever, they can do it fairly secretively," said Rob Callender, trends director for Teenage Research Unlimited.

Lilli Friedland, a Los Angeles psychologist who also does consulting for the entertainment industry, says texting is different from the marathon phone calls most parents remember making as teens because it's typically done with a large group of friends. "For many of them, it is the sense of being part of a group that is really important," she said. What she worries about is that children aren't getting the "cleaner, deeper sense of friendship and relatedness" that came from talking to someone directly, even on the phone.

"We just don't know yet what the impact will be," she said.

Picture above left: Last month, Sofia Rubenstein, 17, used 6,807 text messages, which pushed her family's wireless bill to more than $1,100 for the month. She couldn't believe the "incredible" number she hit.

Indian Students defy ban on mobile phones

Fines imposed on students carrying mobile phones during examinations is turning out to be a good source of revenue for Lucknow University in Uttar Pradesh, India.

"So far, the university has collected Rs 41,600 ($1,015) from students who were caught violating the ban on keeping mobile phones during the examinations. Mobile phones were prohibited by the university following reports that students were using it for copying.

Initially, the university authorities left students caught with mobile phones after giving them a warning. But when it did not work, they decided to impose a fine of Rs 100 on a student found violating ban orders."

NYC Protects Kids From Themselves, And Their Phones

The lawsuit filed by a group of parents in an attempt to overturn Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s ban on cell phones in city schools was thrown out yesterday, according to the NYPress.

"The plaintiffs argue that banning cell phones from the premises violates students’ constitutional rights, but that a ban on using phones in schools is justified. Now that sounds unenforceable. "

Previously:

-- Mayor Repeats Policy: No Cellphones in School

-- Parents demand NYC schools end phone ban

-- Students get call: Teachers back cell phones

-- School Cops Seize Cells

Rave Guardian: A phone tracker to keep pupils safe

A system that tracks students through their mobile phones is among the new technologies being developed to help improve security at America's universities - something increasingly of concern since the tragic events at Virginia Tech in April. 2007 Webby Award winner and favorite BBC reports.

"College officials are increasingly looking to technology, from automated building lockdowns to campus-wide text messaging, to respond to campus emergencies.

One of the applications that is being pioneered to help is Rave Guardian - invented after research found that phones are one of the primary tools students use to keep safe.

Rave Guardian allows the student to set a timer - for perhaps half a hour, when they leave their friends' dorm room to go back to theirs. If they return safe they can simply turn off the alarm.

"If something did happen, it would transmit their location every three minutes - including their profile - to campus safety," Rodger Desai, president and CEO of the New York based company Rave Wireless, told BBC World Service's Digital Planet programme.

"So the user pops up on a Google map, wherever they are in the country, and campus safety knows that something may be wrong."

Communication Lessons From Virginia Tech

The tragedy at Virginia Tech a couple weeks ago strongly illustrates the consequences of not matching messaging to the right medium, writes ClickZ .

"During the shootings, the university tried to get warning messages out via e-mail, even though it's been well established college students don't use their campus e-mail to communicate.

While the administration of Virginia Tech was e-mailing students, students were already communicating with one another via SMS (define), blog postings, IM (define), and plain old cell phone calls. The school desperately tried to get the official story to those who needed it as the wireless airwaves pulsed with rumors, misinformation, and speculation."

Text messages harm written language? (Oh-Hum)

The rising popularity of text messaging on cell phones poses a threat to writing standards among Irish schoolchildren, an education commission says. Reuters reports. "... In many cases, candidates seemed "unduly reliant on short sentences, simple tenses and a limited vocabulary."

In 2003, Irish 15-year-olds were among the top 10 performers in an international league table of literacy standards compiled by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development".

This issue by the way, is almost as old as text messaging itself. And for every negative study, there is one that claims students who text frequently, score well in standard spelling tests.

Postive studies on the effect of text messaging on student's writing skills:

-- Texts 'do not hinder literacy'

-- Texting teenagers are proving 'more literate than ever before'

-- E-Mail and Texting - Not at all bad

-- Texting 'is no bar to literacy'

-- Teacher finds novel way to use texting

Links to negative studies:

-- Technology marches ahead, grammar gets worse

-- Y TEXTING MAYBE BAD 4 U

-- SMS Resulting in Poor English Grades?

-- SMS and Internet blamed for decline in English Examinations

-- SMS threatens Norwegian language say teachers

-- Teachers hung up on SMS

-- An essay written in text message shorthand

German Teachers 'can't send texts'

Who knew Germany was behind with regard to text messaging? According to Ananova, local education authorities in Cologne had to drop plans for a system whereby teachers would be able inform parents when their children skipped school - because most teachers don't know how to send an SMS.

SMS alert system on campus considered "Blue Sky" idea by Virginia Tech last September

With administrators at Virginia Tech facing hard questions about how long it took them to notify students after the first killings in Monday's shooting rampage there, emergency communication is sure to become a pressing issue nationwide, reports the WSJ.

"Emergency systems that include text messages are easily available and generally aren't very expensive -- some new pilot programs even are supported by advertising. Rhonda Weldon, a member of he University of Texas emergency communications team, says text messaging is particularly efficient because students carry their cellphones all the time."

Justin Oberma points out an article in The Roanoke Times, published last September reporting on university officials at Virginia Tech having met with University text message provider e2Campus. But Virginia Tech, like most schools, saw this as to much of an an innovative idea.

"We will certainly be investigating other kinds of communications vehicles,” Tech spokesman Larry Hincker said, though he cautioned that a text-messaging system was still a “blue sky idea” that would take investigation to implement."

Related:

-- Could cell text alert have helped at Va. Tech?

-- Lack of emergency information at Virginia Tech

-- Colleges Seek to Get Word Out Quicker

-- Cell Phones, Web Cam Record Shooting at Virginia Tech

Phonebusters

Phonebusters by CMI Technologies is a handheld device developped exclusively for the educational market to fight the use of cell phones in classrooms (whether disruptive or used for cheating).

The phonebuster works on detecting RF signals and alerts the operator when a mobile device is being used, it can then track the phone being operated. It also detects digital signals of Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.

There was recently an article in The (UK) Times Educational Supplement about a similar product made by another company, Adroit Global Technologies, but with a lower detection range, according to an e-mail I received.

Civil liberties accuses NYPD of bullying students

Police Department employees that patrol New York's public schools are too quick to bully students over minor infractions, a civil rights group charged in a paper released Sunday, reports Newsday.

And one of the complaints listed was their improper enforcement of a NY school rule that bans iPods and cell phones - a rule to be enforced by the schools, not the NYPD.

"The New York Civil Liberties Union said that in recent years it has received hundreds of complaints from both students and teachers about foul language, rough treatment and unwarranted arrests by the NYPD's 4,827 school safety agents. "

Italy bans mobile phones in classrooms

Italy has banned schoolchildren from using mobile phones in class in an attempt to stop ringtones disrupting lessons and prevent pupils messing about with video cameras. Reuters reports.

"The ban follows a series of incidents that have shocked Italians. In November, a video showing a disabled pupil being bullied by classmates, filmed on a mobile phone, caused outcry after it was posted on the Internet. In another, pupils filmed each other sexually harassing a female teacher."

Gadget nails texting cheats

UK schools are installing detection systems in classrooms, exam halls and changing rooms to combat pupils’ pervasive use – and misuse – of mobile phones, reports The Times Educational Supplement. What's novel about this system, is that it does not block signals, which would be unlawful under the Wireless and Telegraphy Act, but detects mobile phone activity - and lets the students know, probably scaring them to death.

"When Tendring technology college in Essex installed two detectors in its exam halls in January, supervisors discovered about 20 phones among 100 pupils. Melanie Bowler, a teacher at Tendring, said: “The kids hate the detectors. We love them.”

The detectors discreetly alert teachers that a mobile is switched on. Or they make a recorded loudspeaker announcement. “We have detected your mobile phone,” an authoritative voice booms. “Turn off your mobile immediately.”

Adroit Global Technology, which manufactures the £150 devices, said it had sold them to more than 20 schools in the UK.

Related article on Sky News today, on how cheating on exams is getting worse.

"Thousands of teenagers were caught copying or using mobile phones to cheat in their GCSEs and A-levels last summer.

The exams watchdog says 4,757 candidates were docked marks, disqualified or given official warnings - 200 more than in 2005.

By far the biggest problem was candidates bringing mobile phones and other devices into the exam hall."

Schools have been told they cannot use technology that actually blocks mobile phone calls and text messages: that would be unlawful under the Wireless and Telegraphy Act. But they are allowed to detect phone use."

Security On Campus’ SMS Petition To Help Make Colleges Safer

Student safety on college campuses nationwide has become an increasingly serious concern, reports Mobile Campus Life, so an initiative by Security On Campus, Campus Progress and Rave Wireless should help bring attention to the matter.

... "By texting the word “Safety” to short-code 30644, students are able to sign a petition that will be presented to University CIO’s around the country and help ensure that colleges and universities are doing all they can to keep them safe."