Why taking phones away in class doesn't work
Confiscating phones for a single period triggers anxiety that causes students to learn even less. Students arrive to class coming off a digital high and are completely unable to do anything, sometimes going as far as drawing screens and keyboards on folded paper.
What people tried
Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.
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- 1taking their phone away during classDid this help you?
In their words
Unedited, grouped by where they were said, most upvoted first within each place, each linked to the thread it came from.
“Then they come to my afternoon class. And they are all coming off their high. And they can’t do anything.”source ↗
“Because me taking their phone away for 50 minutes does nothing to help the problem. It makes them anxious and then they learn even less.”source ↗
“Half the class folded the paper and proceeded to draw screens and keyboards. Tech addiction at its finest.”source ↗
Where this came up
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