Acceptable Use Of Cell Phones In Schools
June 6, 2008 by Steve Maclin · Leave a Comment
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Cell phone use in schools has dramatically changed since 911. When I started out as an administrator pagers were forbidden in school because they were associated with drug trafficking. If a student didn’t want to turn over their pager it was considered a fourth degree disorderly conduct offense, and the principal could file a police report. I don’t believe that it is a state policy that cell phones should be confiscated if they are in plain view in school. Each district probably does have their own policy on cell phones which varies from town to town and state to state. I think what we are looking for here is what we do with the distraction of cell phone use in school? Because of the hoards of recent school shooting that everyone knows about, and the fear of terrorism many parents feel more comfortable sending their child to school with a cell phone so they can get in touch with them when they want to, and in the event of a school emergency. The problems that schools run into is the blatant use of cell phones in school during class time and the disrespectful attitudes that students have when the teacher attempts to confiscate the phone. I have been through this nightmare, so let me see if I can shed some light on this for you.
90% of students are going to bring a cell phone to school. Even in the elementary grades students come to school with a cell phone. Both of my daughter’s carry a cell phone with them all the time. The cell phones are turned off and they are never to be used in the school building during school hours. Do I ever call my oldest daughter during the school day? The answer is no. Would I call her if I knew the school was going through a crisis situation? The answer is yes. If we know that kids have cell phones on them our request should be to keep them off during school hours and keep them out of sight. As a principal I am not going to go through the process of frisking kids to see if they have a cell phone. To me it’s out of sight, out of mind.
If I was to be walking down the hall and find a student talking on a cell phone and there were other students around I would ask to see the student privately and confiscate the phone. My comment to him would be, “Give me the phone, and I will return it to you at the end of the day.” The biggest concern that kids have is not getting the cell phone back. I make them aware that I will return the phone. I don’t want their phone or the responsibility that goes with it. By the time the student comes to my office to pick up the phone I will have already called the parent and made them aware of the infraction and asked them to please talk to their child about the blatant use of a cell phone. If I couldn’t get in touch with the parent I would call until I did. When the student came down to the office to pick up the phone I would give him his phone back. My goal is to remove the phone from the mainstream of the school until the end of the day, not to take a student’s property and hang on to it until a parent comes in.
Cell phone use is not going to go away. We need to have policies that address acceptable use of cell phones in school, not forbid the use of them. By forbidding students to have a cell phone in their possession we will only be creating a rule that we can’t enforce.
Cell Phone GPS: Head and Shoulders Above the Rest
May 30, 2008 by Steve Maclin · Leave a Comment
With GPS technology now more commonplace in many new cell phones, that means that the location of anyone carrying a compatible cell phone can be accurately tracked at any time. The GPS, or Global Positioning System, tracks your geographical location by interpreting data from 3 or more satellites.
Cell phone GPS can pinpoint the location of a cell phone within about five meters, which is up to ten times the accuracy given to us by triangulation. Cell phone GPS system tracking has been a part of the technology that makes of cell phones since 2005.
Locating someone is a popular job for a lot of detectives and cell phone GPS tracking is one thing that makes this task a lot easier.
Cell phone GPS tracking can also be a useful feature to the emergency medical service personnel or police officers when responding to a 911 call from a GPS cell phone.
Picture the scene of a roadside accident where injuries have occurred. Cell phone GPS tracking is also a boon to the police force and emergency medical service technicians when they respond to emergency calls from a GPS mobile phone. Such calls are known as E911 calls, and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has legislated that wireless (cell phone) networks provide location information for 911 calls made by their cell phone subscribers.
Cell phone GPS tracking can therefore be a useful feature for business owners and fleet managers who need to be able to keep track of their vehicles’ movements. Cell phone GPS tracking capabilities can even show you the shortest possible way to get to a given destination.
Garmin Limited (Garmin) is a global provider of navigation, communications and information devices, which are enabled by global positioning system (GPS) technology. Garmin designs, develops, manufactures and markets a family of hand-held, portable and fixed-mount GPS-enabled products and other navigation, communications and information products for the automotive/mobile, outdoor/fitness, marine and general aviation markets.
The company has a growing fleet management line of products to assist businesses. Nuviphone, dedicated PNDs, Avionics, Marine, hiking/fishing, pet monitoring, real time traffic and weather, collaborations with Google, et cetera.
Nokia can definitely see the future profit flow from GPS location based services and would be correct to assume that profit growth will shift to these mobile services from hardware. The Company makes a range of mobile devices with services and software that enable people to experience music, navigation, video, television, imaging, games, business mobility and more. Nokia also provides equipment, solutions and services for communications networks through Nokia Siemens Networks.
These phones are absolutely amazing and imagine a commercial showing the things you can do with Nokia’s GPS Beta Software (supplied for free by their website).
