Cell Phones Save the Day!!!

I am pretty critical of cell phones and how they are used. There is nothing that infuriates me more than hearing a phone ring in class or listening to people talk on their phone in the bathroom. Furthermore, I usually do not find cell phones to be appropriate in schools, but I have had to warm up to their presence as my placement school has pretty lax rules on cell phone use.
I can't stand it when I see students text messaging in class, taking pictures instead of doing work, or leaving the room to make a phone call. However, today in class, cell phones saved my lesson. I had to teach a lesson where students had to do simple calculations that required the use of calculators, but no one had calculators. I had that panic moment where I thought - oh holy s--t, what am I going to do? A student must have noticed my panic stricken face because he said "why don't we use our cell phones? They have calculators." Brilliant. Most of the kids, or at least one in every pair, had cell phone and were able to make the calculations. Maybe cell phones aren't so bad after all?!

Block Scheduling and Technology

I have been in my student teaching placement for about 6 weeks now, and my mentor teacher includes the use of technology in nearly every lesson. We are always using laptops and going to the computer lab to work on projects and reports. As many of you know, getting 30 Ninth graders to move to the computer lab, turn on the computer, and then actually get to work can take up to half of a 50 minute class period. However, my placement school has block scheduling, and I have observed that this structure facilitates the use of technology.

Our block schedule allots 90 minutes for each class, which can be a lot of instruction time (especially in English and History classes), but I think this amount of time enables students to sit down with technology and really take the time to get involved. It promotes using technology such as blogs and podcasts because the students have the time to familiarize themselves with what they are working on and to ask the teacher questions in class.

This is not to say that using technology only works in blocks schedules, but it does seem to be more efficient for the teacher and students.