School lets youth use phones
WESLEY CHAPEL (AP) – Jennifer Gould ended her class announcements and told her students to take out their cell phones.
“I need at least three people who can get a signal in here,” Gould said to her advanced placement literature class. “We’re going to be studying the works of D.H. Lawrence, and I want you to find some things about him that you don’t already know.”
Nearly everyone whipped out a phone and began tapping away. Within moments, the teens were sharing their Internet discoveries.
“He lived during World War I.”
“He had relationships with men and women.”
“He lived the second half of his life in exile, considered a pornographer who had wasted his talents.”
With each detail, Gould pulled her students deeper into a discussion about the author. When the talk had run its course, the students set their phones down and turned their attention to another author.
In a world where most high schools have adopted a “we see them, we take them” policy on cell phones, Pasco County’s Wiregrass Ranch High School swims upstream. It encourages teachers to allow students to use their phones in classes for educational purposes. Teens routinely use their phones to shoot pictures for projects, calculate math problems, check their teachers’ blogs and even take lecture notes.
“That doesn’t mean we don’t have students who misuse the privilege,” said principal Ray Bonti, who this summer distributed some recommended classroom uses for cell phones to teachers. “There are boundaries just like at every other high school. Those boundaries are just defined a little differently at Wiregrass Ranch High School.”
If anyone’s complaining, Bonti hasn’t heard it. Parents, staffers and students alike have praised the school’s many efforts to be technologically savvy, including giving students permission to use their personal laptops on campus, too, he said.
The school also has plenty of firewalls and filters in place.
Kids know they have something most other schools don’t offer. And they love it.
“I think it’s a good policy, because we’re all pretty much adults here,” senior Katie Everett said. “People are going to text no matter what. So I think it’s good that the principal and staff here are being open and letting us use it for educational purposes.”