Smartphone use at HSPA

Smart Phone Usage at HSPA 

There is often a lot of talk in the media around school policies for mobile phone usage. At HSPA, we believe that when used appropriately smartphones are a great tool. It is highly unlikely that these devices are going to disappear in the future, and therefore educating students in their appropriate use must certainly be seen as an important, albeit challenging, aspect of educating 21st century citizens. Our expectations are reflective of most work places. Phones are only to be used productively during class time, strictly with teacher permission, or kept in their bags. As per our policy, phones are not considered a suitable BYOD and can be confiscated by teachers, if they are deemed to be disrupting student learning. 

Ways in which smartphones are used for productivity during school include:

• Calendars (Canvas calendar can be synced with Google calendar) 
• Cam Scanner Pro (convert handwritten notes for digital submission - highly recommended) 
• To-do lists (Tasks free) 
• Reading (Kindle app) - Its hard not to get excited about the prospective national literacy levels if students spent as much time reading biographies, etc as they did on social media 
• Camera/video for recording project progress, recording and analysing performances, etc 
• Voice recording of ideas 
• Emails (Students should sync their school email account to phone mail client) 
• Calculator 
• Video tutorials on YouTube 
• Push notifications from canvas regarding class notifications, tasks, etc 
• Access to Sentral (timetables, daily notices) 
• Communicating with parents, industry mentors, etc via text or phone 
• Testing, prototyping of media designed for phones (apps, websites, audio, etc) 

Key areas of concern include:

• Social media use – Our provision of Canvas and DoE email system, ensures there is no educational reason for students to access social media during class time. This is the leading cause of unproductive phone use, and social complications. 
• Texting inappropriately
• Playing games 
• Unauthorised recording (video/audio) of members of the school community 

How can you assist your child to maximise their learning opportunities through productive use of devices at school?

• Chat to your child about the positive and negative use of mobile phones , and how they use their phone at school 
• If you find that your child is unable to demonstrate responsible phone use during  school time, of their own accord, you could install a blocking/monitoring app such as 'Screentime' (free), or 'Qustudio' (subscription).  Once setup, these apps can eliminate opportunities for students to misuse social media and any other apps you nominate. You can restrict their access to any app you choose for any time period (9 – 3pm for example), while still leaving the ability to make calls to designated contacts. They allow you to track and limit student's phone usage, from your phone/tablet/computer if required. There are many other features. I would highly recommend investigating this if you believe your student's education, development or behaviour is being negatively impacted by overuse or misuse of their phone.  https://www.qustodio.com/en/family/how-it-works/ There are several other alternatives to this software.. 
• Please refrain from calling your child during class time. If it is an emergency, calling the front office assists us to enact the appropriate support processes. If it is not an emergency, the bell times for our breaks can be found at HSPA Website/Our School/Bell Times

Recommended Productivity App - Free 

Cam Scanner Pro 

Is an extremely easy to use document scanner for your phone or tablet (Apple and Android) free for users with an education email address. Take a photo of a doc with your device, then email, upload to cloud etc as a .pdf or .jpg (Automatically adjusts positioning, optimises image quality, etc) 
 

How is it useful? 

• If you prefer to work with pen and paper, but are required to submit/ share assignments, documents digitally. With Doc scanner, students can hand write notes and use the camera on their phone/tablet to take a picture and email to themselves as a .pdf or .jpg. Or save to cloud. This means they could submit hand written notes to Canvas for example, and their teacher can give detailed feedback online (students should always check with teacher before submitting formal tasks in this way). 
• Easily capture high quality digital versions of sketches, notes, storyboards, mindmaps, etc and easily add them to a Word doc, or digital folio 
• Contains OCR (converts words on a page to text which you can edit in Microsoft Word, etc) 

Available through iTunes or Android play store. Register using an education email to upgrade to lifetime use of the Pro version for free! For more details regarding Camscanner: 

https://www.camscanner.com/user/download  

As always, for clarification on any of the above, or to discuss your students learning in the TAS faculty please email me: darren.ponman1@det.nsw.edu.au

Darren Ponman 

Head Teacher TAS 

HSPA ICT Coordinator