By Ian Holmes

Nanaimo district won’t follow Victoria school’s lead on cellphone ban

Jun 5, 2017 | 5:17 PM

NANAIMO — Nanaimo-Ladysmith Public Schools administrators are taking a hands-off approach to cellphone usage in local classrooms.

Assistant supt. Scott Saywell told NanaimoNewsNOW he believes banning cellphones in their schools, as a Victoria middle school has done come next September, is not the right approach.

“I think there’s a real disservice if we ban the cellphones in school because it’s not reflective of what’s happening in society, that’s where the education has to occur,” Saywell said.

School District 68 does not have a formal cellphone usage policy, according to Saywell. He said it’s up to schools and teachers in individual classrooms to set the ground rules.

“Because it (cellphones) has varying effects on different students whether you ban them or not and I think it’s determined by the maturity level and that’s not necessarily dictated by age.”

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He said there are many benefits emerging tech tools like smartphones can have to enrich the educational experience.

“It brings an opportunity for all kinds of things into the classroom,” Saywell said. “You can Skype guest lectures in, you can visit another country virtually. There’s so many great things about technology.”

That being said, Saywell noted the district is continually monitoring the pros and cons of cellphone usage in their schools. He said relying on any one educational tool is “problematic.”

Nanaimo and District Teachers’ Association president Mike Ball agreed a widespread cellphone ban isn’t the way to go.

“Students need to be taught how to use it appropriately, when to use it and when it’s not appropriate to use it,” Ball said.

He said restricting cellphone usage is nothing new in District 68 schools.

“There are many teachers who have a box at the front and everybody puts their phones in…Others trust the students that they won’t use them.”

Ball said parents have a huge role to play in promoting constructive phone habits. He said some parents feeling the need to have constant communication with their children could be promoting inappropriate in-school usage.

One research paper suggests the majority of schools are still treating cellphones as a scourge and banning the devices outright both in and out of class.

But that study and a growing number of boards say they’ve had more success once deciding to stop fighting the technological tide and find ways to incorporate cellphones into schools.

Canada’s largest school board, in Toronto, reversed a four-year ban on cellphones and now lets teachers dictate what works best for their classrooms, while a board in Quebec has gone so far as to distribute tablets to all students in Grade 5 and up while maintaining a permissive smartphone policy.

A survey of more than 4,000 high school students found that 79.3 per cent of respondents owned a cellphone.

Participants indicated that the phones did not figure strongly in their formal education.

Only 12.9 per cent of survey respondents said they had never sent texts in class, 55.7 per cent said they felt it was acceptable to send or read text during lessons, and 90.7 per cent said they had seen classmates doing just that. Another 64.2 per cent reported seeing their peers accessing Facebook on their phones while in class.

— With files from Michelle McQuigge, The Canadian Press

ian@nanaimonewsnow.com

On Twitter: @reporterholmes