At some New England schools, the zero tolerance policy with regards to cell phones enforced in Warwick and in much of Rhode Island is considered to be an antiquated and ineffective way to deal with Smart Technology. Instead these districts are embracing the power of connectivity and using this unprecedented access to information.
These districts use Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Intagram and other social media for a variety of classroom activities.
The main fear about using media in the classroom is that students will not be focused on lessons and will instead be "lost" in social media during class time. This is a real concern, however at what point do we allow students to prove that they can do the right thing? At what point do we embrace modernity instead of having teachers and administrators become the SmartPhone police instead of doing their real jobs of educating our students?
In an attempt to illustrate the educational power of Social Media, I invite you to post your ideas on how Smart Phones and/or tablets can be used in the classroom to enhance student learning. Also, please post your ideas to Twitter with a hashtag #ClassroomMedia