Automatic Suspension
Wednesday, July 25, 2007 at 7:39PM 
Michigan School District Cracks Down on Cellphones, iPods appears in USA Today. Rather than having electronic devices confiscated or serving a detention, Plymouth-Canton Community Schools have begun automatic suspensions. Students are slapped with a one-day suspension for the first violation. Students could be suspended for up to five days for more than three violations.
The main reason for such harsh consequences? You guessed it: they might be used for cheating. Forget that handheld devices have potentially great educational value. Forget that assessment should be more than memorizing facts that can easily be looked up. Forget that outside of school, looking up information on your mobile device is not cheating, it's being resourceful (and becoming a necessary life skill). Forget about teaching ethics. Just ban utensils that could enable cheating. Perhaps this should include paper and pens, which are much more commonly used for cheating. Heck, ban the air supply so students can't possibly whisper answers to one another!
Plymouth-Canton's director for student services is quoted in the article, "This was not done capriciously. ...We want to teach people responsible use." What? First, I had to look up the word capriciously. Knowing what that means didn't clear up my confusion. Automatic suspension is not teaching students responsible use. Suspending a student for bringing an iPod to school is in no way guiding learners in how to use technology responsibly. I'm not opposed to suspensions for cheating, but for simply bringing a potential learning device into school? No way.
I enjoyed reading the comments on Michigan School District Cracks Down on Cellphones, iPods:
- genxer65 wrote: "Kids do need to learn when to use these devices and when not to."
- o050441 wrote: "Humans survived thousands of years without a cellphone. There is no NEED for this technology to live day to day. It's a luxury, a privilege or even a crippling disease."
- Eldiablo wrote: "Don't use them during school hours, how hard is that to follow?"
- mistamilla wrote: "There's another issue being overlooked: the damage / theft of iPods and cellphones. I know this firsthand...as a teacher, you'd be STUNNED at the number of calls our school gets.....get this now....the number of parents that want us, the school, to REPAIR or REPLACE Johnnie's or Susie's damaged property."
- commonpurposecon wrote: "Suspension just allows them to use the devices all day long and not in school. Have the library confiscate the devices with no guarantee that they will see it again."
- RD72987 wrote: "Its not just iPods and cell phones, get rid of all of the elements of cheating....People copy other peoples homework in study hall, heck that's what study hall was for."
ipod, mobile phone 
Reader Comments (8)
In a message on http://twitter.com/mcurtis" REL="nofollow">Twitter, Mike Curtis made a great point that I'd like to repeat here: "Love 0 tolerance. No thinking required."
Interestingly I didn't see any mention of cellphones and iPods being banned for the faculty and staff in the article. What about the administrators walking around with their Treos or worse yet an iPhone! An iPhone? It must be a year suspension for such a device! :)
Is the education system in such denial that it can't realize this is "do as I say, not as I do"?
Very well said! Suspension does seem really harsh. In my district, teachers take the item away from the kids, and they can have it back at the end of the day. This is only, however, if they use it in class.
Of course, in my classes, we tend to use iPods a fair amount, so I haven't confiscated one yet.
When will we learn that the only thing we know about these kids' futures is that there will be technology? If we take away the most current technologies, how will they learn to use them business or future education?
Saw your post on Twitter last night and read the article and finally got around to reading your post. I just don't understand how a school or teacher can't or won't set expectations in a classroom. For example a simple one would be no iPod use during class discussions or exams. Cell phones off during class. As for cheating, a student inclined to cheat is going to do this with or without an electronic device. As you say, instead of dealing with the underlying issue, just blame the iPod...
I wonder how many of the administrators in the district are able to utilize their cellphones and Ipods for educational purposes. Do not try and be like the salmon. Tap into the interests of the students and their engagement rate will rise and apathy will wane. The policy is way to authoritarian for the twenty first century.
Thanks for the important post, Tony. This kind of thing is getting way out of hand, and people need to express their outrage. It's unfortunate how much administrators are swayed by public opinion.
Recently, after conducting a morning-long handheld awareness session for school administrators, I was very pleased to see/hear that they walked out with new, more positive ideas and attitudes about handheld uses in school. I even had one admin who had, early in the day, proudly shared the school's newly drafted policy about electronic devices (banning them...) By the time the session ended, he walked out saying that he was going back to rewrite it! A victory!
It's about educating our leaders, folks. And it's a critical task that those of us who are handheld proponents must take very seriously and work very hard at accomplishing.
Until administrators (and teachers) truly understand the possibilities and potential of handhelds, these kinds of absurd policies will keep getting written. A paradigm shift needs to happen. Administrators (especially!) and teachers must be educated to see the value in changing the way teaching and learning happens. And that requires true leaders who persevere. Thanks, Tony, for being one of the best!
Hmm...I think back to some tactics used in my classroom for sharing "ideas" during at test before mobile devices....they were notes written using a pencil or pen....refresh my memory, did pens and pencils get banned in schools or were students suspended for using one?
Here is a thought...change instruction so that students need the devices to gather data but to "answer" they need to process that data in such a way that each would have a unique answer that shows deep understanding!