A professor obliges his students to lock up their smartphones and he starts a "trend" among his colleagues.

by Shirley Marie Bradby

October 10, 2018

A professor obliges his students to lock up their smartphones and he starts a "trend" among his colleagues.
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Teaching methods in schools change quickly, having to take into consideration the rapid changes that take place from generation to generation.

In fact, today's children are born in the age of smartphones and it is very difficult for them to separate themselves from this device. They have grown up with a smartphone and it is a fundamental part of their everyday life.

This attachment can be frustrating for adults who are in contact with young people, especially for teachers who often find themselves having to interrupt a lesson because of a smartphone ringing in their classroom.

A professor obliges his students to lock up their smartphones and he starts a "trend" among his colleagues. - 1

Michael Lee is a photography teacher. During the 2017 school year, he noticed a strange behavior in his students. They came early to class and carried out the tasks that were assigned to them much faster than the students in his courses from previous years. 

Professor Lee only came to understand, later, the real reason for his students' unusual interest in their assignments. He discovered that, in reality, the students were not passionate about their classwork, but they did it quickly in order to finish the lesson first and to have extra time to spend on their various social media accounts.

The teacher felt betrayed, but at the same time he resolved to do something decisive: "My goal is to provide my students with something to be interested in. And this is very difficult when at every second there is a beep sounding off that requires their immediate attention to see what the message might be." 

So the professor started thinking about different plans, but in the end, he decided to buy a special smartphone locker on Amazon. 

Each student is assigned a numbered locker and at the beginning of each lesson, students are asked to place their smartphones inside the cabinet which is equipped with a charging station for each compartment. 

Michael Lee noticed improvements in almost no time and that is why his system has been imitated by other teachers. The students seem not to be able to do without their mobile phones and just thinking about it makes them panic. But when they are offered a valid alternative to their smartphone screen, the students show that they can become interested in other things, and they even forget about their smartphone!

It is precisely on this that today's teachers have to work because the traditional school content is no longer '"interesting" enough for today's young people who already have everything they want within reach. The subjects and methods of teaching need to be modernized in order to continue transmitting to the students the values that only participation in school classwork can.

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