Cellphones?

The following was originally published October 5, 2010 at http://tereflection.blogspot.com/2010/10/can-cellphones-be-used-in-teaching.html The church I attend has been having us use our cellphones to give our opinions recently and it made me wonder about using cell phones in our own classrooms one day. I mean, everybody is going to have on soon if they dont at this point, many young kids have them when I got mine in high school, its crazy! Although I dont think that cell phones have a place in every situation, I think that they could be effective and useful in some situations. Just like in church, they can be very useful in giving and opinion on something and it can be fully anonymous. I was trying to look for other ways to use cellphones in a classroom and when I was researching, I found that people had been using them as resources like calculators, dictionaries, cameras and using the internet as a tool! Even though we could say that is a problem and distraction, it can also be very useful when some schools are not able to have them in their classrooms. You can have a group research something and not have to go to the computer lab, although activities including the cellphones would have to be planned thoroughly, it could be of a great use of a resource to teachers! Think about it! Its a new generation and even more new technology...how can we use it to our advantage??