By JONATHON HOWARD
WHILE an increasing number of schools are adopting the use of iphones and smart devices in classrooms, one Noosa independent school is bucking the trend with the use of all student owned phones and devices banned during school hours.
Noosa Pengari Steiner School at Doonan is an independent school with 300 students from Prep to Year 12, offering a nationally accredited and state recognised curriculum.
Every student is required to keep their devices turned off and in their school bags upon entering the school grounds and during school hours.
The results are surprising, with children encouraged to develop skills to solve problems, think creatively as well as an increase in the students’ interpersonal interaction.
While some schools use the smart device as a learning aid or tool, Noosa Pengari’s academic director John Stewart sees the use of student-owned devices as an unnecessary source of distraction in the classroom.
Mr Stewart was appointed to his role at the start of the current semester and has worked for more than a decade on curriculum in various Steiner Schools, both nationally and internationally.
“We don’t believe that a student’s learning experience can be significantly improved through allowing them access to their smart phone in the classroom environment,” he said.
“In addition, it creates the potential for distraction through off-task phone use or even opens up the possibility for cyberbullying.”
Mr Stewart said students were already tech savvy through immersion in our modern lifestyle and the use of smart phones posed no intellectual challenge for a modern youngster.
“There is certainly a place for technology and it’s important that students understand ICTs in order to consciously use them as the powerful tools that they are,” he said.
To this end, the school employs multiple digital technologies such as laptops, cameras, projectors and has a fully equipped Maclab, but the devices belong to the school, so that teachers are able to control when and how the students access them. The school also takes a cross-curricular approach to technology by teaching binary as well as dismantling and assembling a computer to understand the working parts.
Mr Stewart referred to several educational studies which have showed the negative effects on a student’s ability to concentrate and retain information taught in lessons where they had access to their smart phones.
The school is among a small group of independents that attempts to challenge the idea that the wide introduction of digital technologies into the learning environment carries all the answers.
Steiner School teachers also avoid the use of calculators and digital technologies as teaching tools in the primary years, an approach that recently gained media attention in the case of a Steiner school in Silicon Valley.
“Our teachers don’t ask our primary school students to automatically reach for their calculators or phones, but instead they are challenged to develop their own skills, without relying on a device or computer to provide the answers for them,” Mr Stewart said.
“We’re attempting to instil a sense of self reliance in our students, where they learn to use their creative thinking to solve complex problems.”
HAVE YOUR SAY: Can you remember life without a mobile phone? Do you think your mobile is more of a distraction than a benefit?
