Sounds of Silence
Recently, in a couple of circles, the question of student use of portable music devices (mp3 player/iPod) in high school classrooms has come up. The question seems to be should it be allowed or not? My question is ~ for either side there should be more to the question – what is the purpose of allowing versus not allowing?
I posed the following question on Twitter:
I received a nice amount of responses shown below.
In reading the responses, there was a theme that popped out at me. Many teachers allow the use of the equipment even if it’s against school policy. Interesting to note, and led me to this follow up question:
I didn’t receive near the amount of responses for this one, but it was late in the day. I boxed in blue the one response I received for this followup question. You can see the respondent indicated use was mostly to keep kids quiet. At first, that might seem like a not so good reason. However, the more I thought about it, the more I decided that is not actually a bad reason. If student A is normally noisy and disruptive to student B, but now Student A can listen to music, then the disruption is less for student B. If Student B is listening to music, then he/she is not being disrupted by Student A. So, it’s possible that even if the reason is to keep kids quiet, the dual purpose of meeting learning needs might be met.
Of course, the quality of student work while listening to music is an area the teacher would have to be responsible for judging. If work suffers, then the use of equipment could be the issue. If work does not suffer, and use helps to reduce disruptions, then what’s the problem in the end?
This question is one that hits home with me, because I know for a fact that I work better with ambient noise. When I prepare to work, I turn on the television, open my laptop and get to it. I have used the television for background noise for more years than I’ll share here:) It’s probable that I would have done the same with an mp3 player had they been available to me at the time.
Now, all this talk is about using these devices during independent time. If educators can begin to get a handle on how these devices could be used for learning, now that would be a topic I’m much more interested in! See the post boxed in red ~ that’s what I’m talking about! If you’re using these types of devices in the classroom, leave a comment and spread the word.
Filed under: Thinking... and
I worked for our state education dept running a trial on ipods in learning. We gave teachers an ipod for special projects, and then looked at how they enchanced learning. I was surprised at just how useful these devices were. We all thought of the obvious things but without any restrictions placed on use people were very creative. :) I think every teacher would benefit from one, and student learning is def. increased. As a teacher, I would have to say.. bring on the devices.
We also investigated the advantages of mobile phones in learning and there was a lot of scope for learning there too.
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