Expository Essay about the use of cellphones in the classroom

Cell Phones in Classrooms Land Teachers

on Online Video Sites

By Vaishali Honawar From Education Week

VIDEOS of teachers that stu-dents taped in secrecy areall over online sites like YouTube and MySpace. Angry teachers, enthusiastic teachers, teachers clowning around, singing, and even dancing are captured, usually with camera phones, for the whole world to see.

Some students go so far as to create elaborately edited videos that use popular soundtracks and sound effects to poke fun at their teachers.

Now, concern is growing among teacher advocates that the prolif- eration of such videos is causing

stress for teachers and. some stu- dents, and could have a chilling effect on classroom discussions.

"It is disturbing to the educa- tional process," said David Strom, the general counsel for the Ameri- can Federation of Teachers (AFT), because the fear of being taped could change how teachers inter- act with students. What's more, the trend could deter class participa- tion by students "who wouldn't want to speak up for fear of being mocked, if they felt their answers would be put up on the Internet," Strom said.

The threat of exposure by cell

Vaishali Honawar Is a staff writer at Education Week. Condensed with permission from Education Week, 27 (November 7, 2007), 1, 12. Copyright 2007 Editorial Projects in Education, Inc. For more information, please visit www.edweek:org.

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THE EDUCATION DIGEST

phone cameras has potential pro- fessional, as well as emotional, con- sequences for teachers.

A teacher in Arizona was placed on administrative leave last month, pending an investigation, after do- ing a cheerleading routine in class. Some students later said that she had performed the routine at their request and that they had not found. it offensive.

In another well-publicized case, in the Kent school district in Wash- ington State, teacher Joyce Mong found herself the subject of a video titled "Mongzilla," shot by students that made fun of her appearance.

Tales from Here and Abroad

Almost every teacher inter- viewed for this article had a story to tell. Teacher-written blogs are replete with tales of students' us- ing now ubiquitous—and easily concealed—communications de- vices in class to take videos or still pictures.

Jay Rehak, an English teacher at Whitney Young High School in Chi- cago, said that he would be willing to have parents or others sit in his class and observe. But it worries him that someone might take a small slice of a 45-minute class and put a misleading video on the Web.

He recalls that a colleague be- came irate in class and was sur- reptitiously taped by a student. The video wound up on YouTube. "I wouldn't appreciate it if it hap-

pened to m e . . . . Everybody makes mistakes," Rehak said. "Anyone can take a clip of anyone at the wrong time and make it look really bad."

Paul Martin, a teacher at the pri- vate AGBU Manoogian-Demirdjian School in Canoga Park, CA, said a student once taped him with a cell phone while he was teaching, and the video was posted online. While there was nothing damaging in the video, just the experience of finding it online was unnerving be- cause he had no clue he was being taped.

"I went to the student and talked to him, and told him that I didn't have the expectation of being taped," said Martin. The student apologized.

With the pervasive presence of the Internet and forums such as YouTube, a free video-sharing site where users can upload and view video clips, it is not surprising that the issue resonates around the globe. Teacher videos can be found online from Canada to South Korea.

Teachers in those other coun- tries have also raised their voices in protest against the student vid- eos.

In Britain, a teachers' union last year called for a ban on YouTube, accusing the company of encourag- ing cyber-bullying. In a case in Scot- land cited in the Guardian newspa- per, students filmed a teacher in the classroom and posted it on

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Ceii Piiones Land Teaciiers on Video Sites

YouTube with the caption "You are dead."YouTube eventually took the video down.

In Quebec, Canada, four students were suspended after they taped a teacher yelling at a student.

In Finland, a student was found guilty of libel and ordered to pay 800 euros in damages by a court for putting a video online of a teacher singing with karaoke accompani- ment at a school party. The video was labeled "karaoke of the mental hospital."

Legal Questions Here in the United States, legal

experts say school districts tend to ignore videos that are simply em- barrassing to a teacher. They do act when they find that the taping is a threat to the school or teacher or is disruptive to learning.

"There are a variety of issues with cell phones in school and what's been posted," said Tom Hutton, a senior staff attorney for the National School Boards Asso- ciation (NSBA), based in Alexan- dria, VA. "Did students make com- ments that were threatening? Was it a threat or was it a parody?" Districts tend to be more concerned when they see safety issues around a student-posted teacher video.

Legal experts say they are un- aware of any instances in which a teacher filed a lawsuit against a student and his or her family be- cause of a video.

Teachers could potentially sue

for defamation if someone selec- tively made recordings to cast them in a libelous light, the AFT's Strom said. He also pointed out that laws in several states prohibit recording a person without his or her knowl- edge.

What complicates the issue for teachers who find themselves the unwitting subjects of their students' handiwork are court precedents that can be interpreted to mean that teachers do not have privacy rights in a classroom.

Thomas E. Wheeler II, an India- napolis-based lawyer who is on the board of directors of the NSBA's Council of School Attorneys, points to two lawsuits. In Evens v. L.A. Unified School District, students covertly taped a teacher's class- room performance that was later used against her in termination pro- ceedings. The court held that a teacher must always expect public dissemination of his or her class- room communications and activi- ties.

In Roberts v. Houston Indepen- dent School District, the court found that videotaping a teacher's class- room performance by a school did not violate the teacher's privacy rights.

Schools could potentially act in cases where they found that stu- dents used school equipment to tape or to put videos online. Wheeler said, or if a video proved substantially disruptive to the school or the learning process. •

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THE EDUCATION DIGEST

"If a kid has a photo and posts it on YouTube, modified or unmodi- fied. It is hard for the school to show disruption because of it. That's First Amendment speech," he said.

He added that in districts or schools that require students to turn off cell phones, students could be subject to discipline for break- ing that rule.

In the case of the videotaping of Mong, the offending student was suspended, but not for his online criticism of his teacher. Instead, he was punished for the disruption that he and his collaborators caused by bringing a video camera into her class.

Limiting Usage Districts have for years at-

tempted to regulate the use of elec- tronic pagers and then cell phones in schools because they can be dis- ruptive and now, with the advent of the camera phones, are sometimes used to copy tests.

Most districts require students to turn cell phones off in class- rooms. Some, New York City among them, bar students from bringing cell phones into classrooms. Such bans have attracted the wrath of parents, some of whom sued New York last year. The ban was upheld by a state court.

In Dallas, elementary students are not allowed to carry compact phones. Those in middle and high school have to turn their phones

off during school hours. Spokes- woman Sandra Guerrero said that if a student was found using a cell phone, the teacher could take it away. Repeat offenses could cause a student to lose his cell phone, after which he would have to pay a $25 fine to retrieve it.

Other districts allow schools to make their own rules. For instance, in Chicago, schools are allowed to set their own policies on students' cell phone use.

In the District of Columbia, schools are free to set their own rules, and have come up with inter- esting ways to deal with the issue. At Benjamin Banneker High School, for instance, a neighborhood gro- cery store allows students to drop off their cells before they enter school.

In the Contract Teachers like Chicago's Rehak

saythat rules regulating cell phones are not enough. School districts need to include specific guidelines in their- student-discipline codes forbidding their use to photograph teachers.

One option, said Strom, the AFT lawyer, is for unions to bargain for protections in their contracts. "It is conceivable that . . . a local union could bargain that if a student takes a video in the classroom, the dis- trict would investigate and take dis- ciplinary action against the stu- dent."

Many contracts already include

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Ceii Piiones Land Teaciiers on Video Sites

District Ceii Phone Poiicies Boston—Piiones iiave to be turned off and out of sigiit. Ciiicago—Schoois are aiiowed to make their own ruies. Daiias—Eiementary students may not carry ceil phones.

Secondary students may, but the phones have to be turned off during ciass.

District of Coiumbia—Schoois are aiiowed to make their own ruies.

iVIilwaukee—Student ceii phones are banned. New York City—Student ceii phones are banned.

provisions on when and why teach- ers are videotaped by adminis- trators for evaluation purposes. Districts and teachers have some- times worked with YouTube and other host sites to remove par- ticularly offensive videos, Strom added.

As classrooms and students go more high tech, a need exists to start a conversation between par- ents—who want children to have cell phones for emergencies—and teachers and administrators on stu- dents' photographing of teachers on the sly, said John Wright, the president of the Arizona NEA. The pros and cons of new technology in classrooms need to be thoroughly discussed to find a solution to the problem, Wright said.

Some teachers have found edu- cating their students about the is- sue helpful.

Kevin Metcalf teaches a Partici- pation in Government class at North Rockland High School in Thiells,

NY, in which he tries an experiment with his students. He asks them to whip out their cell phones—whose use is otherwise forbidden in the classroom under school rules— while he puts his head down on his desk for a second and acts as though he's doing nothing. He then asks them that if they were to take a picture and put it on YouTube, what would people think of his teaching?

"They come up with answers like 'lazy,' and 'doesn't care.' I say I would be judged by your peers on one second of a 45-minute class," he said. The experiment brings home to the students how such an action could misrepresent the truth and have serious consequences for someone.

Despite the lesson, Metcalf said, he knows a student could catch him on camera at any time. "My fear is one day I would be on a video," he said, "but, hopefully, it is some- thing I could explain." 011

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