Taken from the interdweeb this afternoon.
"Education bosses want every high school student armed with a cellphone to prepare them for a digital future, but a mother who lost her son to text bullying is appalled.
Teenager Daniel Gillies died after receiving vindictive texts about a facial disfigurement. His mother, Helen Algar, says they bring a culture of bullying that schools need to tackle before all students are made to carry them.
She wants students to embrace technology, but says schools have not yet managed to stamp out text bullying.
His mum says technology is clearly here to stay but it must be monitored carefully, or it will add to students' stress levels and play on their insecurities.
Many schools now ban cellphones because of the threat of bullying and inappropriate use. Some have raised concerns as they grapple with students using phones to bully, send abusive texts and pictures, arrange fights, and post from their phones to online sites.
But Education Ministry e-learning unit manager Howard Baldwin says digital devices will "massively increase" within five years.
The ministry was already funding an Auckland pilot programme where phones were compulsory and wants them used everywhere - although it will leave it up to schools to make that call.
Baldwin's unit was developing digital- device guidelines for schools and would work with schools to find the device that best suited them.
Concerns about costs were irrelevant because partnerships between providers and schools would likely be set up to buy them for students, and the majority of students had a cellphone.
"We will move away from the pen and paper world," Baldwin says.
He said portable devices like smartphones or stripped-down computers would be standard within five years."
I'm all for moving with the times, and digital is certainly looking to be the way of the future, but wonder just what the ramifications will be in the long term. We already have generations of kids who can barely spell or put a sentence together with passable grammar. Will we become a species who can no longer physically write (as opposed to typing and thumbing in text) further down the track?
Originally Posted by Katman
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