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=Cell Phones in the Classroom=

**Preamble**
//**Digital Disconnect**// At home in their everyday lives, students are using a variety exciting technologies like cell phones, video games, social networking devices, and instant messaging. These technologies are intertwined into their everyday life for communication and collaboration. Students see these technologies as a social tool. They do not see them as a learning or educational tool.

However in the classrooms, teachers, administors, and school boards are completely ignoring these technologies. Here is the digital disconnect. Students receive the message that these tools are social, not for learning, and that they have no professional function in the world.

But these are the students of the next generation. They are the ones communicating and collaborating with the world in new and exciting ways. Teachers are creating a digital disconnect by not allowing students to use these technologies in the classroom.

Educators need to develop strategies that allow students to use cell phones in learning; thus, showing students how they can turn their social toy into a learning tool.