From banning to embracing - 5 steps to meet the challenge

By Lisa Nielsen and Willyn Webb | Cross posted at the Teaching Generation Text blog


Talk about progress...

Just a year ago Teaching Generation Text:  Using Cell Phones to Enhance Learning, hit the market during a time when most schools still viewed cell phones as the enemy. For many they were simply a device that caused discipline issues and were viewed as a distraction and a cheating tool.  

Today, pioneering educators and their students have embraced a number of ways cell phones can enhance learning paving the way for an exciting challenge. Innovative educators can get teams of students together to participate in the Verizon Innovative App Challenge which positions phones as a learning tool.

Teaching Generation Text looks at using basic, text enabled cell phones to support learning and enhance good teaching strategies.  That was just the tip of the iceberg and a way to open educators’ thinking to stop fighting and start embracing cell phones.  The Verizon Innovative App Challenge takes it to the next level by taking the tool they love and using it to address a need or problem with an app!  

The challenge puts students front and center which makes perfect sense. Students have always been the most important and driving force behind Teaching Generation Text whether it was including students in developing responsible use policies, establishing classroom management practices, or in planning lessons using cell phones, or making learning relevant and interesting.

According to the Verizon Foundation, students are challenged to use their STEM knowledge, their ingenuity, and their creativity to come up with an original mobile app concept that incorporates STEM and addresses a need or problem in their school or community.

Challenges like this bring us closer to a day when students will stop hearing things like, “Give me your phone, Quit texting, Put the phone away, Cell phones are banned here.” Instead this challenge positions these devices as a viable learning tool that will help student address a need or problem and use their creativity and thinking skills to develop solutions USING THEIR PHONE!   

Here are 5 Steps to Get Going with the Verizon Innovative App Challenge.
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