Teens send three texts per class

According to a study conducted by Joel Benenson of Common Sense Media, teens send 25-percent of their total text messages while killing time in class. Switched reports.

The pollsters broke the numbers down and found that students send 110 texts a week during class time, which equates to over three texts per class.

The study also determined that half of all students have used their phones to either store notes they can consult during a test, or to text a friend for a test answer. Only half of all the students polled believe this phone cheating to be a "serious offense."

Teens panic as they're forced to unplug at camp

No texting, no Facebook, no iPod; teens cope with being unplugged at sleepaway camp. Cellular News reports.

For a generation used to texting, Facebook and YouTube, going away to sleepaway camp can be a bit unnerving. Many outdoor camps don't allow cell phones, laptops or iPods, and there is no computer lab for them to update their pages.

... Experts agree that unplugging is a great idea. But it will be a "shock to the system" for those who are digitally dependent, says Anastasia Goodstein, author of "Totally Wired: What Teens and Tweens Are Really Doing Online."

... While teens will inevitably make friends at camp, 10 friends in your bunk is not the same as hundreds on Facebook, says Gary Rudman of GTR Consulting, author of the upcoming "2009 gTrend Report", which focuses on teens and technology.

Related:

-- No cell phones at summer camps (2003)

-- Away but connected: Sleepaway camps differ on e-mails and cell phones (2005)

High-tech cheaters jailed in China

Eight Chinese who used high-tech communications equipment, including mobile phones and wireless earpieces, to help their children cheat at university entrance exams have been jailed on state secret charges, local media said, reports Yahoo! Tech (cf also article in the BBC).

The eight, from the wealthy eastern province of Zhejiang, got together in 2007 to plot how to help their children as "they knew their achievements were not ideal," the official Legal Daily said.

One of the parents hired university students to provide answers which were sent to the children via wireless earphones while they were in the exam room, the report said.

But their ruse was discovered after police detected "abnormal radio signals" near the school, the newspaper said.

The parents were given jail terms ranging from six months to three years after being found guilty of illegally obtaining state secrets, it added, without saying what happened to their children.

Related:

-- Hi-tech exam cheats jailed (China)

-- The new cheating culture (USA)

-- ‘Wigged out‘ students caught cheating (Vietnam)

-- Cheating reports in national exams (China)

-- Students found using SMS during final exams (Australia)

-- Pupils use mobile phones to cheat in exams (UK)

-- High School Kids tell the New York Post they cheat on exams with their cell phones

Links to articles on the largest student cheating scandal to date, which occured in South Korea:

-- Metal Detectors Present In Exam Rooms (South Korea)

-- Exam scandal offers shades Orwell's fear (South Korea)

-- Education Ministry goes after cheaters (South Korea)

-- A Struggle of 18 Days with 280,000 Text Messages (South Korea)

-- 1,625 More Suspected of Exam Cheating (South Korea)

-- South Korean Students Burned for SMS Cheating

-- Answers Relayed From Other Organizations (South Korea)

-- Cheats stir jamming debate (South Korea)

-- Seoul Education Office Took Precautions Against Cheating (South Korea)

-- Students held for (Text Message) exam scam

Mobiles at school don't harm kids

Using mobile phones and playing video games doesn't harm teens' academic performance, according to new research by Michigan State University. Techradar reports.

A three-year study of students from 20 schools found that using mobiles had no effect on the educational results of a group of 12-year-olds.

Read full article.

Related links to both positive and negative studies on cell phones, students and academic results.

Tajikistan Bans Mobile Phones in Schools

The parliament in Tajikistan has adopted amendments to laws on education which will now ban the use of mobile phones in all educational facilities in the country, which covers both schools and universities. The ban applies to both students and teachers, reports Cellular News.

These measures were taken following multiple requests from the country's president, and are intended to raise quality of teaching in educational institutions," a Tajik lawmaker said.

The decree also banned students from using their own cars to travel to their studies.

Student Arrested For Classroom Texting

A 14-year-old Wisconsin girl who refused to stop texting during a high school math class was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct, according to police.

The student was issued a criminal citation for disorderly conduct, which carried "a bail of $298," and had her phone confiscated.

[The Smoking Gun via Gizmodo]

Idea new ad on 'Education for all'

This latest ad from IDEA highlights the power of mobile telephony to address the socially relevant theme of education. Fabulous. Spotted on Core77 .

The thought-provoking ad campaign has Abhishek Bachchan playing the head of an educational institution. When challenged by the traditional, physically bound classroom methodology that prevents reaching out to many more who are in need of education, he uses mobile telephony to overcome the barrier.

UK Parents 'want texts from schools'

According to the BBC, one in 12 of the 1,493 parents polled by government education technology agency Becta said schools kept them informed using these methods.

"But 68% of parents said they wanted schools to use such technologies to keep them up to date more frequently.

Some 15% of parents were told of their child's progress at least once a month, and 85% were updated four times a year.

And eight out of 10 wanted more feedback on how their child was doing. "

Some Teachers Are Welcoming Cell Phones In Class

Rather than wanting cell phones out of their classroom, some educators are now embracing them as platforms for learning.

Schools from Michigan to Texas to Maryland are using smart-phones to send email to students, send virtual handouts and podcasts. Instructors say they can check attendance by using the phones.

[via WITN]

Let pupils abandon spelling rules, says academic

Children are being held back at school because they are forced to memorise irregular spellings and learn how to use the apostrophe, a leading academic will claim this week. Times Online reports.

"John Wells, Emeritus Professor of Phonetics at University College London and president of the Spelling Society, will use the society’s centenary dinner this week to call for a “freeing up” of English spelling".

The teaching of literacy in schools is a major worry. It seems highly likely that one of the reasons Britain and other English-speaking countries have problems with literacy is because of our spelling and the burden it places on children. "

Professor Wells pointed towards the emerging technologies that are leading to a reevaluation of spelling, saying: “Text messaging, e-mail and internet chat rooms are showing us the way forward for English.”

Mobile phones 'boost school standards'

Schoolchildren should be allowed to use mobile phones in the classroom to boost education standards, according to researchers, reports The Telelgraph.

"Despite fears that mobiles and MP3 players are a huge distraction, it is claimed schools can get the most out of pupils by giving them full-time access to the latest gadgets.

Academics said mobiles could be used for a wide range of educational purposes, including creating short movies, setting homework reminders, recording a teacher reading a poem and timing science experiments.

New-style "smartphones", which can connect to the internet, also allowed pupils to access revision websites, log into the school email system, or transfer electronic files between school and home.

Employing them as part of day-to-day lessons boosts pupils' motivation levels, it was claimed.

The conclusions comes despite high-profile calls from teaching unions for an all-out ban on the use of mobiles in schools."

Related: - Phone a friend in exams - A Sydney girls' school is redefining the concept of cheating by allowing students to "phone a friend" and use the internet and i-Pods during exams

Phone a friend in exams

A Sydney girls' school is redefining the concept of cheating by allowing students to "phone a friend" and use the internet and i-Pods during exams. The Sydney Morning Herald reports.

"Presbyterian Ladies' College at Croydon is giving the assessment method a trial run with year 9 English students and plans to expand it to all subjects by the end of the year.

... An English teacher, Dierdre Coleman said her students were being encouraged to access information from the internet, their mobile phones and podcasts played on mp3s as part of a series of 40-minute tasks. But to discourage plagiarism, they are required to cite all sources they use.

"In terms of preparing them for the world, we need to redefine our attitudes towards traditional ideas of 'cheating'," Ms Coleman said. "Unless the students have a conceptual understanding of the topic or what they are working on, they can't access bits and pieces of information to support them in a task effectively.

"In their working lives they will never need to carry enormous amounts of information around in their heads. What they will need to do is access information from all their sources quickly and they will need to check the reliability of their information."

... International education consultant, Marc Prensky threw out the following challenge to educators in a British Educational Communications and Technology Agency publication: "What if we allowed the use of mobile phones and instant messaging to collect information during exams, redefining such activity from 'cheating' to 'using our tools and including the world in our knowledge base'?

"Our kids already see this on television. 'You can use a lifeline to win $1 million,' said one. 'Why not to pass a stupid test?' I have begun advocating the use of open phone tests ... Being able to find and apply the right information becomes more important than having it all in your head."

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.