I read a blog response to the question "Should kids have phones in schools"?
The post reminded me of the ways that technology has changed through the years.
Last century it was common for people to be on phone plans that charged by the minute. When I was in school, long distance calls cost over a dollar a minute.
Because people were paying to communicate on the phone, it was customary for activity in the room to stop and for people to concentrate on the phone call.
VOIP technology changed the equation. Voice Over IP digitizes, packetizes and compresses audio. It then sends it over the Internet. This means that, in most cases, telephone call are virtually free.
Since telephone calls are free, face to face meetings should take precedence over the telephone. It is also easy to record phone messages for later use.
Back to the question: Should kids bring smartphones to school.
I see smartphones as a wonderful technology that brings an entire world of information.
However, people need to learn a new etiquette. Thise new etiquette should teach that people in the room should take precendence over the phone as the people who are meeting face to face have more invested in the event than the people on the phone.
Schools are the best to engrain such etiquette. For example students should learn that phones should always be off in class and when interacting with friends.
So, my answer is? "Yes!" Students should have phones in school, but we should teach the etiquette the face to face communication is more important than phone use.
Such an education will better equip students for life in an information age that bombards people with irrelevant information.
I generated the images for this post with DALL-E. DALL-E images appear to be dropping in quality. I still have 20 credits. I will switch to Stable Diffusion when I run out.
Posted using Proof of Brain
