Indonesia launches a war on cell phones

For all the talk about the positive impact that mobile technology can have on education, officials in the East Java are not convinced. From the Jakarta Post:  The Kediri Education Office has launched raids across schools in the East Java town to crack down on students bringing cell phones to class. Education officials and teachers ...

For all the talk about the positive impact that mobile technology can have on education, officials in the East Java are not convinced. From the Jakarta Post:

For all the talk about the positive impact that mobile technology can have on education, officials in the East Java are not convinced. From the Jakarta Post:

 The Kediri Education Office has launched raids across schools in the East Java town to crack down on students bringing cell phones to class.

Education officials and teachers at 192 schools have also begun searching students’ bags, motorcycle saddlebags and other items for cell phones.

The crackdown was conducted after the Kediri municipal administration issued a regulation prevent all elementary to senior high school students from bringing cell phones to school. Heri Siswanto, head of the education office’s public junior education unit, said his office had issued the decree last Friday.

"We’ve seized dozens of students’ cell phones," he said Monday.

"We found many of them hidden in students’ motorbike saddlebags, even though we informed them previously about the regulation."

He added all the relevant institutions would continue holding such raids until all schools in the city were free from cell phones.

I guess that’s one way to deal with the shortening attention span in the classroom…

 

Evgeny Morozov is a fellow at the Open Society Institute and sits on the board of OSI's Information Program. He writes the Net Effect blog on ForeignPolicy.com
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