(Astigan.com) – Cellphones are often disturbing a lesson and most teachers ask their students to turn them off. However, new research suggests that mobile phones can help pupils perform better at school.

Scientists at the University of Nottingham have conducted an experiment that shows that mobile phones could actually come quite useful to pupils. Dr. Elizabeth Hartnell-Young and her colleagues have come to this conclusion after a nine-month experiment that studied the consequences of allowing pupils in five secondary schools to use their mobile phones during lessons.

The project involved 331 pupils in schools in Cambridgeshire, West Berkshire and Nottingham. Dr. Hartnell-Young says that even before the project, the students reported in a survey in what classes and what function of their handsets they use most. The survey shows that most pupils used the devices during Maths and most used function was the calculator.

During the project, all the 331 pupils used their handsets for learning. “Due to the way the project was set up, all the students used their phones for learning, guided by their teachers”, Dr. Hartnell-Young said.

The pupils used their mobile phones for various educational purposes. Some created short movies or recorded a teacher reading a poem, others used the handset to connect to the internet and access the school email system and send files home, or to collect information from different websites. A number of teachers got involved in the project as well.

“Teachers used SMS to remind students of special events or deadlines”, Dr. Hartnell-Young told Astigan.

However, teachers still are against the free use of mobile phones by pupils when in school. Most say that the handsets are a distraction from lessons. 

“Some teachers are afraid that students will not pay attention in class if they are sending SMS. Some teachers don’t realize that mobile phones have many functions that are useful in class” said Dr. Hartnell-Young.

In any case, Dr. Hartnell-Young says that the research results show that mobile phones could be transformed in very useful learning tools, but this shouldn’t immediately change a school’s policy regarding the handsets.

“Our report does not recommend that schools rush into policy change, but rather allow gradual adoption as attitudes and behaviors align with purposeful learning, until the school reaches the tripping point, and using mobile phones is a natural as using any other technology” she said. 

Tags: children, learning, mobile phones, research, schools