The Cell Phone Is It Hurting Your Education - 1169 Words

Saagar Sharma Oona Patchen Due Date: 11/04/2014 Essay #4 RD English 114 The Cell Phone: Is It Hurting Your Education? While the communication boom is often times praised for how it’s improved our lifestyle, we have not so much as realized the severe consequences that have taken place in regards to how it is affecting our future. The cell phone in particular, is posing as a detrimental threat to society as it is severally affecting the education system and its learning processes. Activities such as texting and social media have caused a variety of issues within the classroom. It affects a student’s ability to read and write, it makes verbally communicating to others harder than it already is, it creates unbearable distractions for the†¦show more content†¦Dr. Weimer received a Ph.D. in speech communication from Penn State and was also awarded the Penn State Milton S. Eisenhower award for distinguished teaching in 2005. Weimer writes a weekly article for the The Teaching Professor Blog on topics such as classroom policies, active learning, assessment, generational differences, and student performance and has also consulted with over 450 colleges and universities on instructional guidelines and policies. In one of her articles, The Age of Distraction, she cites the Kuznekoff and Titsworth study, an experiment used to find out how the distractions of a cell phone affect a student’s performance. They found that â€Å"†¦students who use their mobile phones during class lectures tend to write down less information, recall less information, and perform worse on a multiple-choice test than those students who abstain from using their mobile phones during class.† (p.251). A crucial study in my opinion, it offers factual evidence that cell phones are distracting and detrimental in their ability to learn new material and excel in the classroom. Weimer also continues to claim that students are â€Å"inseparable† from their cell phones. However, students are not the only one that feels the brunt of this distraction. We must also realize tha t cell phones do not only place a distraction to students, but also the teacher. Even with classroom policies emplaced and attempts to enforce it, for example by confiscating devices and