Spring Grove Area High School student notification data throughout each period has shown that the average number of notifications for each class is 203. Are cell phones becoming distracting in the classrooms? According to Pew Research Center 72% of U.S high school teachers say cellphones are a major distraction in the classroom. Is this really true?
Paxton Drumheller, a Spring Grove Area High School English teacher says that; “Yes, cell phones have always been a distraction in the classroom and I don’t see it getting any better.”
“Yes, the attention span of students is depleting due to the presence of cell phones,” says Joshua Graham, a Spring Grove Area High School History teacher.
Are cell phones interfering with our ability to learn? Spring Grove area high school student notification data shows that,
Spring Grove Area high school Notification
| [Period 3/4] | 213 |
| [Period 6/7] | 229 |
| [Period 8/9] | 168 |
With one student getting 103 notifications on social media alone in the first part of the period and 32 more in the second part of the period, that being a total of 135 notifications on social media in a 40 minute class period. Are the presence of cellphones really affecting grades?
According to Andreas Bjerre-Nielsen, an assistant professor from the Copenhagen Centre for Social Data Sciences (SODAS) at the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Copenhagen. He and his colleagues believe that previous studies may have rested on an intrinsic resistance to the new technology that affected understanding of mobile use and learning—and not on an actual problem, saying, “We need to shake off this fear of technology that has affected our opinion on the use of mobile phones in class.”
As well as Professor David Dreyer Lassen, who is part of the research team, says, “Previously, students were distracted by other things than mobile phones. They might look out the window, stare at the ceiling, or attend to other matters, when the teaching did not catch their attention. If we had had data on how often students previously engaged in these micro-distractions, I believe we would see that the degree of distraction corresponds to the one represented by mobile phones today.”
So are cellphones really the main cause of students’ low attention spans and decreasing grades or is it or is it another underlying issue in the classrooms causing this?
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