Only if they’re under state control, you see
Doug McCaughan at KnoxNews makes the great point that for years, schools have been trying to get more computers into classrooms, only to now stigmatize and ban them when students bring their own in the form of cell phones and smartphones.
To a certain extent, I suspect good old-fashioned technophobia, but I think there’s also a lot of the desire for control. Schools want computers under their control, with software they determine, used in ways they approve of; students circumvent this central control by using their own.
Smartphones really are just small form-factor computers these days. They can let you browse the web, send email, organize your day, and play games. Schools have to get with the picture, even if that picture isn’t the one they’d prefer to paint themselves.
http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2009/jun/09/teach-cell-phones-dont-ban-them/!
Categorised as: Education, Politics, Portable computing