Smartphones: Are They Making Students Smart?

A Discussion on the Cutting-Edge Educational Technology Topic

EDU 5270 - Edwin Vega

Jason Flach
Jennifer Goldschmidt
Kelly Powers
Justin Seymour
Melanie Taylor

Introduction
As society evolves, humans are always looking for new, innovative ways to simplify life
with technology. Today, there are countless types of internet-connecting devices made available

to students and teachers in school, to use as tools in the classroom. Such devices include
chromebooks, iPads, other kinds of tablets, laptops, etc. The use of smartphones in the classroom
has been a widely debated subject within the world of teaching/education. While many people
understand how useful smartphones are in everyday life and in general, they might not see how
these devices could effectively be used in classrooms. On the other hand, students might love the
idea of being able to use their smartphones in class, but dont see what problems could arise from
this privilege. There are several pros and cons within this topic, and all future educators should
take the time to weigh both options and corresponding data before making the decision to utilize
this tool in their classrooms.
Positive Attributes of Smartphones for Students
Despite the fact that people think smartphones hinder the classroom, they can be a huge
asset to students, as well as teachers. One of the biggest assets for students using smartphones in
the classroom is having access to a large array of free educational apps, made available to them
through these devices. Smartphones with their software applications (apps) can complement
lessons instead of disturbing them. (Decker, 2012, 318) These apps are free and easy to use, and
make it easy for students to review lessons and learn concepts they may have missed the first
time. To benefit students even more, there are free educational apps available for all disciplines,
such as Socrative, which have immediate feedback auto-grading system, anonymous peer
reviews, and a pre-made three-question exit poll (Decker, 2012, 319) These apps let students
and teachers know what the students level of understanding is right away.
The preinstalled apps that come with smartphones are just as useful as any app that a
teacher could use in their classroom. These apps allow students to be able to take notes on their
phones by video recording the lesson with the camera app, allowing students who struggle more

to keep up and avoid disrupting the flow of the class. These pre installed apps can also save
students a lot of money. One of these apps is the calculator app. Putting aside the cost of the
smartphone, the calculator app is free, whereas a good Texas Instrument graphing calculator can
easily cost over one hundred dollars and usually requires four AAA batteries to work. Having
these handy apps located on one device means a student a wouldnt have to carry around a big
laptop or text books. With the touch of just one app, students and teachers can access most Web
content. Some media files (Flash, video, audio) may not be available, but the text, graphics, and
hyperlinks can be quickly accessed (Banister, 2010, 125-126) When given permission from the
professor, this allows students to quickly look up information.
Smartphones are also useful in providing students who cannot always make it to classes
by bringing about a type of online learning called M-Learning (Mobile-Learning). MobileLearning is cheap, is not time consuming nor requires changes to a typical online class to be
accessible with smartphones. Mobile accessible classes enhance flexibility, extends learning
hours by time spent on commuting, waiting, and unexpected breaks, and thus makes eLearning
offer more attractive (Synytsya, 2015, 298). With this added flexibility from smartphones,
students are given the chance to develop responsibility, by getting their work submitted on time.
M-Learning is perceived as being flexible, personalized, interactive, and engaging (Synytsya,
2015, 299) It helps students feel like they have more control in their education, making them
more willing to complete assignments and pay attention to what they should be learning. MobileLearning also gives students who are shy and unable to speak up in class the opportunity to share
their opinions and thoughts in class. Due to the use of smartphones, students can easily come up
with nicknames and use online blog sites of Google Drive for quick, safe, and anonymous
discussions, where the only person who can see who is posting what is the professor.

Smartphones can be a great and convenient educational tool. They are smaller than
textbooks, lighter than laptops, and can provide information in a timely fashion. Students who
have disabilities can also benefit from the use of smartphones in the classroom. Smartphones
allow making the curriculum accessible for all individuals from the outset of instruction rather
than prescribing strategies for struggling learners after failure in the general curriculum
(McMahon, 2014, 40) giving these students a second chance at a proper education. These devices
have the option to increase the font size on the screen, making words easier to read for students
with limited vision, or difficulties such as dyslexia. Along these lines, smartphones can also cater
to students who are hard of hearing, by utilizing the automated voice to read different things. The
use of smartphones in the classroom is still widely debated in the educational world, due to the
negative views on how they can affect the teachers and the students in the classroom.
Negative Attributes of Smartphones for Students
Although there are many pros to using smartphones in the classroom, there are also quite
a few cons. Smartphones being distracting and addicting is a struggle for teachers, as well as for
students. Although many students may not see it as a negative for themselves, it is. This is
because it is keeping them from paying attention and learning the material that they will need to
know in the future. This leads to lower test scores. If a phone rings in class, it is not only a
distraction for the owner of the phone, but to all of the other students as well.
Another negative of students using smartphones in the classroom is that it limits their
social interaction. This is another fact that they will probably deny, since they believe it helps
them to be more social. However, texting and the use of social media prevents face-to-face
interaction, ultimately not allowing students to learn social skills. Emotion is difficult to be

expressed through text, so students are not getting as much practice with social cues, facial
expressions, and tone as they should.
Bullying is a negative effect of the use of smartphones in the classroom for teachers, but
it is especially a hurdle for students. A study on new media in the classroom was conducted and
when a participant was asked about the disadvantages of new media in the classroom, she stated,
Cyber-bullying is very disturbing, because when I was kid, bullies had to have some balls. They
had to face you and say something to you right? Nowadays you can say these horrible, vicious
things about people that are then carried all over the media and you dont ever have to see the
repercussions of what youve done (Goldschmidt, personal research). It is a lot easier to be
mean to someone through text than it is to say in person. Kids are hiding behind their screens and
hurting others for no reason. Smartphone use in the classroom could increase the chances for
bullying to occur.
Another disadvantage of smartphone use in the classroom is the fact that not every
student may be able to afford a cell phone. If students are using them for educational purposes,
the students who dont have cell phones are not able to have the same opportunities to learn. On
top of that, they may feel embarrassed that their families cannot afford them.
Technology fails sometimes, thus making smartphones unreliable. If something is not
working for one student in the classroom, this puts the student at a disadvantage and can prevent
that student from learning to the fullest. This student is now no longer on an equal playing field
with his or her classmates, and he or she could potentially fall behind due to a lack of resources.
Along these lines, some people are more technologically advanced than others. If there are
students who are not tech-savvy, they may not be able to learn while using them. They may just
be focusing on how to use the hardware or the software, as opposed to learning the content being

taught. Not only this, but technology is constantly changing. If a student finally masters a piece
of technology, it could change in a week putting the student back in square one.
There are many cons that using smartphones in the classroom creates for students. Some
of these are the same for teachers. It is difficult to see smartphones being incorporated into
classroom instruction when it may not be helping students in the long run.
Positives Attributes of Smartphones for Teachers
Teachers know that there downsides to students using smartphones in the classroom, but
they often do not realize the unique abilities and opportunities that smartphones can contribute to
their own pedagogy. Smartphones present a less bulky, more personalized technology that can be
incorporated into a classroom, particularly for the benefit of the teacher. As an instructional tool,
smartphones are almost endlessly capable of providing engagement and efficiency. Teachers can
also employ them in ways to make managing a classroom easier, yet another positive reason for
teachers incorporating their technology into the classroom.
Because smartphones can be accessible to each student within a classroom, teachers
benefit from the uniting quality that smartphones can have on their class. Students have been
proven to be more engaged when allowed to look at their phones periodically throughout class
(Hennessy, n.d.). For teachers, this means that student engagement will be increased and teachers
will likely be able to accomplish more in a single class period, as opposed to the absence or
withdrawal of smartphones from the students. Students also have access to an entire digital world
that can help them from looking up a word that they dont know, or beginning their research for a
paper. Since students have access to such copious amounts of information, this may spark a
students interest even more, thus pushing the teacher to encourage and keep the curiosity going,
by planning lessons and/or activities around the use of the smartphones. Every teacher wants a

student to grow to be their own educator, to have curiosity and drive to follow where that
curiosity takes them. Smartphones therefore benefit teachers, in that they indirectly help teachers
motivate their students to pursue their intellectual interests. But smartphones can also benefit a
teacher after a students curiosity has been peaked.
Teachers can benefit from using a smartphone for its more literal purposes. If resources in
a school are slim, a teacher can use her smartphone as a makeshift document camera. Recording
lessons for students that are absent from class or have learning disabilities that necessitate
auditory instruction could be another advantage to teachers. Teachers can build their personal
records by using smartphone technology to save work that they have done, making digital copies
of both their personal notes and content notes for their students. Smartphones would also make it
easier for teachers to assess their own instructional methods by using the camera feature to
record lessons and review them at a later time.
Creating QR codes and using Skype in their daily lessons could help teachers engage
their students more fully. By designing a scavenger hunt or a mock-exhibit, teachers can have
students tour through a series of information clips or artifacts, using a QR code to discover
information about that topic (Barrett, 2011, n.d.). Students can then learn kinesthetically, and
teachers would have a means of conveying information without having to lecture, a method
proven to be detrimental to student comprehension. Using Skype can allow teachers to
immediately confer with a professional or expert in a certain field, allowing the class to listen to
a guest speaker by connecting their smartphone to a computer or projector. Such educational
opportunities would require extensive planning and coordination ordinarily, but smartphones
eliminate the majority of these difficulties.

Similarly, teachers can ease stress and confusion by creating mobile groups with parents,
other faculty, or even students when appropriate. These mobile groups can be utilized to send out
reminders, homework assignments, and other news (Barrett, 2011, n.d.). With students using
texting as a main form of communication, they may wonder why their teachers have not begun
using the same of communication with them. Although teachers would have to use discretion,
using mobile groups such as Remind 101, Celly, and Broadtexter could be another means of
aiding teachers in their goals for their classes (Barrett, 2011, n.d.). Other apps could be used by
teachers for more personal pedagogical reasons, including lesson planning inspiration, research,
and networking. More commonly, teachers have turned to Twitter as an instructional app;
smartphones would make this possible for the teacher to model proper social media behavior and
convey content knowledge on such a platform.
Smartphones connect teachers with multiple resources, from apps to other professionals
to students parents, providing them with a wide range of benefits. Garcia and Morell (2013)
argue that new media is changing learning to have students interact in new ways with the texts,
and our data offers some wonderful examples of how students can use new media to customize
the educational experience for students. By benefitting both the teachers and students,
smartphones and other new media can enhance the learning environment and experience for all
those involved, and hopefully teachers will no longer only view smartphones as a distraction in
class, but to a useful tool that can open up possibilities in all areas of education.
Negatives Attributes of Smartphones for Teachers
Although there are many positives of the use of smartphones in the classroom for both
students and teachers, there are also quite a few negatives. One downside is that smartphones can
be addictive and distracting. If teachers allow students to keep their phones on their desks during

class, the students may constantly text and browse the internet. Once a student sees that he or she
received a text or a Facebook notification, it is extremely difficult to ignore it. This affects the
teachers because if this happens, they need to get the students attention back. During a study
about new media in classroom instruction, participants were asked if they had any negative
experiences with technology. One participant answered that it is infuriating when you have
students sitting there texting during your lecture and you just answered a question and then
theyve decided to look up and pay attention and ask the same question you just answered
(Goldschmidt, personal research).
Porn and explicit content is another negative aspect of smartphones in the classroom for
teachers. A participant from the study just mentioned told two stories of inappropriate content
being viewed in the classroom. The first involved a couple of kids who were watching explicit
content during class and the teacher caught them. This could be a huge liability on the teacher.
The second case involved a teacher who left her phone on her desk. The students went through
her pictures and found inappropriate content on it. They distributed the pictures and the teacher
ended up getting fired. The teachers open possession of a cell phone in the classroom cost her
her job.
Smartphones can be very beneficial inside and outside of the classroom; however there
are negatives to smartphones as well. About 50% of students own smartphones, and usage in
class is usually not allowed. If students were allowed to use their smartphones in class for
education use, it could lead to some issues, particularly for the teachers.
Since we are able to do basically anything on smartphones now, it could be near
impossible for teachers to make sure their students are staying on track. The main caution when
using smartphones in the classroom is that students will become distracted. Students could be

using their smartphones to text, use social media, make calls, play games, and even watch
television. Usually when one student starts using their phone to do something they arent
supposed to, another joins in, and then another, and another. In no time, the teacher has lost half
of the classes attention. Refocusing the class is an entirely different issue. The teacher has to
stop the class, ask the student or students to turn off their phone or get them back on track, which
also leads to distracting the class even more. If an entire lesson is based off of students using
their smartphones and they are using their phones in other ways, then the teacher will have to
watch over those students like a hawk for the rest of the lesson. Other options could be students
sitting out of the lesson, or students using another platform to perform the activity in the lesson.
Limiting distractions when using smartphones in class would be a difficult task, but could be
worth it when done correctly.
When giving a test, there is always the fear that students will be cheating. Smartphones
only increase this chance. Students could be texting each other or looking up information on the
internet. If a student is all the way in the back of the classroom and can barely be seen, what is
stopping them from pulling out there phone and doing a quick Google search? Students could
also have pictures of their notes on their phones to look at and help them with the test questions.
When students help each other on tests, such as sending texts with the answers, some might not
even think its cheating. A lot of students just believe that theyre simply helping out their friends
and just trying to be nice. Teachers need to be sure to pay attention while administering tests and
take a walk around the room to make sure that no students are using their smartphones to cheat.
The third negative for teachers for students using smartphones in the classroom, is picture
and video capturing. Students are able to take a picture or a video of something either the teacher
or other students are doing. Not only can a student take a picture or a video and show all their

friends in school, but they could upload it to YouTube or another platform for the entire internet
to see. This would be both morally wrong, but also an invasion of the students or teachers
privacy. The student could get into a lot of trouble for doing this. Along with taking a picture of
video of someone, comes bullying. Bullying is one of the worst, if not the worst issue in most
schools. Taking an embarrassing picture or video of a student could really upset them and lead to
even bigger issues. Once a picture or video is taken it will spread like wildfire. Soon enough, the
entire grade or maybe even school will see it. That means that everyone who sees the person
being bullied has seen them getting bullied. In most cases this would only lead to more and more
bullying. If the picture or video originated from a certain teachers classroom, they could be under
the gun for allowing it to happen. Situations like this are definitely something that a teacher
needs to be on the lookout for at all times. Even though the use of smartphones could bring some
positives into the classroom, do they really outweigh all of the negatives? Teachers would need
to be on the lookout for the incorrect use of smartphones at all times to make sure there is no
distracting, cheating, or bullying.
Conclusion
There is simply no denying that smartphones are a huge part of the modern adolescents
life. If utilized effectively as a tool by teachers in the classroom, smartphones could work out
very nicely. Essentially, using smartphones the same way laptops would be used in the classroom
could ultimately enhance student learning, cater to different learning needs and styles, and
genuinely engage students in each lesson. Contrastingly though, using smartphones comes at a
price, no pun intended. There are different risks involved, such as inappropriate behavior during
class time, different potential liabilities, and causing classroom management issues. This topic
has many strong ideas in both opinions expressed by different individuals. Ultimately, it is up to

the educators to decide if this tool would work effectively, and benefit the unique group of
students that they are teaching.

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