I checked out Prensky's What Can you Learn from a Cell Phone? Almost Anything? first, because I have read other stuff by him, mainly on gaming. I knew the cell phone had a wide range of uses, but I didn't realise that it was so versatile. As an electronic device, how it blends miniaturization with multi-tasking is its biggest charm.

So while NYC schools are debating whether students should be allowed to bring them to school, and there is this publicity about students using them to cheat on exams, and there is this latest intrigue about whether as older people get further into senility, they can hear when students are receiving messages, Prensky is looking at the learning potential of the cell phone.

They are computers and language labs and cameras and diaries, and radios and entertainment centres and ... all rolled in one.

The article made an impact on me because I have one of those call-if-you're-in-trouble models. Have I been tempted to do an upgrade? I'll tell you this much. The article leaves me uncomfortable. Any serious language teacher should equip herself on par with her students. Especially since, according to Prensky's statistics, in the developing world many people have more than one cell.

I like the punch of his concluding statements about where we should be on the ethics of cheating with cell phones. He advises teachers that 'They might better serve their students by redefining open-book testing as open-phone testing' and 'encouraging, rather than quashing, student innovation' with regard to 'retrieving information on demand during exams'.



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