Excuse me, my phone is ringing.

Let me get that.  I have an email from one of my sons.  My nephew just sent a text message asking for directions to my younger son’s next performance—I’ll send him a map…from my phone.  My wife wants to know what kind of bird is perched on the deck.  I’ll check the North American bird guide.  On my phone.  What was the score of last night’s Broncos game?  Let me open my ESPN application.  I need to know the yardage to the bunker from here and then to the green.  It’s available on the gps along with all the other courses I play.  What does that word mean and how is it pronounced?  Let me check the dictionary.  On my phone.  I don’t know.  Is it supposed to snow in Silverthorne this weekend?  I’ll search the weather forecast.  Where did Longfellow teach before Harvard?  I’ll Google that and let you know.  I’ll look it up on my phone.  I have a quiz over his life and poetry.  It’s a Word document on my desktop computer at home.  Let me get it.  On my phone.  This conversation is taking a little longer than I’d thought.  Excuse me, my phone is ringing.  I’d better answer.  It’s my wife.

I’m glad it’s not 8:00 AM yet.  When school starts, I have to shut off my phone just like the students do.  It’s against the rules for me to use it during the day.  Don’t tell anyone, but during my planning period and lunch (which I eat in my classroom) I check email, call my doctors’ offices and the pharmacy, sometimes check in with my wife….

I had my juniors write a persuasive essay recently.  They were to present arguments on a thesis concerning cell phone use in school.  Not surprisingly, my Honors students almost unanimously expressed well-developed rationale in favor of cell phone (especially “smart phone”) use during school hours, but recognized the need to restrict use primarily to lunch, passing periods, or down-time during class when the teacher would permit it.  They also described educational uses similar to those I have facetiously presented here.

The reality of cell phone use—again, smart phones in particular—make them today’s handheld computer, PDA, and telephone all in one handy device.  I’ve already violated school rules on several instances by using my phone enabling students to get to their email (not allowed on the school’s computer system) in order to establish accounts on the class blog; looking up information from district-blocked web sites; and finding documents I needed that were on my desktop computer at home.

I’ve been complaining about the obsolescence of available technology in schools since the personal computer was invented in the 1980s.  We’re still a decade or two behind philosophically even if we’re not that far behind with hardware.  It’s difficult to explain to students that we’re preparing them for their futures when we can’t even get them up to speed with our past.  I think they’re laughing at us.