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New educational uses of cellphones are challenging the "turned off and out of sight" rules that many districts have adopted for student cellphones on campus.

A growing number of teachers, carefully navigating district policies and addressing their own concerns, are having students use their personal cellphones to make podcasts, take field notes, and organize their schedules and homework

"In our district, especially at high school, students have a cellphone on them at all times, just like a pencil—it's an underused too

A free text-to-speech plugin for Microsoft Word For people with reading and writing difficulties, having text reinforced by hearing it read aloud can be very useful.

It struck me as I looked at this list that it’s a lot like what I believe about children and computers: that student choice, plus time for unstructured access to lots of different computing experiences is crucial to developing literacy and fluency with computers. My vision includes a teacher or mentor modeling passion, collaboration, interest in the subject, and offering experiences that challenge students without coercion, tricks, or rankings. If I had to come up with a catchy acronym, I’d call it Sustained Tinkering Time (SST).

So, looking at this list, there are some things that seem really relevant to the kind of computer fluency I would like all students to have. Wouldn’t it be great if students had: Free access to lots of different kinds of books software and hardware The teacher reads works on computer projects too No tests, book reports, logs, comprehension quizzes Comfortable space to read work on computer projects and that this was for all kids, not a reward or remediation?