Child voice

Gender and sixth graders’ mobile phone use (thesis in the making)

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I am a sociology student who is doing his master’s thesis on gender in the context of sixth graders’ relations to their mobile phones. Focus groups with a class of sixth graders and interviews with their current teacher as well as one of their past teachers will make up the main part of my data. Most of the focus groups have already been conducted, and they’ve produced some fruitful information on the complex ways that the mobile phone configures into the everyday lives of children.

It seems clear that data collected by a sociologist and an “outsider” who the students aren’t familiar with differs from that collected by a teacher or another authority figure who the students know. The children have let me in on some interesting information they maybe wouldn’t have disclosed to their teachers or parents.

At times, the students have also taken over the interviewing in the focus groups while I have just listened in. It’s become clear to me that the children have much more knowledge on many of the intricacies of the world of mobile and digital technology than I do. Many dimensions of the students’ “phone world” can only be illuminated by a slang and new vocabulary unknown to older generations. This is exactly why children and youth should be given the freedom to themselves take the lead in discussions on the digital technology of today. A central objective of my thesis is to mediate the voice of the students to those interested in the sociology of mobile phones.

More to come later…  

The children’s manifesto on smartphones – or a start on it…

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Following this year’s activities, the Danish class at Sofiendalskole discussed and summarised some of the good and bad things about smartphones. Here are their thoughts:

How we live in a world of smartphones
• People can become addicted to checking their phone.
• Phones can be a problem if you have poor self-control.
• Phones can disrupt your sleep at night.
• One can get bored without one’s phone.
• Smartphones are good to have on long journeys and can provide you with entertainment.
• It is important to be able to receive calls and call if you are injured or sick.
• Younger children should have ‘light’ phones with fewer functionalities.
• For younger children, it might be good if parents lock parts of the smartphone functionalities.
• When you buy a phone, you should consider what functionalities are actually needed.
• The feature called “phone” is not used very much.
• Maybe it is necessary to propose how old you have to be before you get a proper smartphone, perhaps when the child is old enough to use social media – e.g. 13 years for Facebook and 16 for using Snap chat. However, there are probably not many people who in reality would comply with such a rule.
• Parents should teach their children that phones are a tool that can be used for special and important things, including SMS and calls. It is not necessary to learn how to download apps and search on the Internet.
• It may be necessary to supervise younger children when they use apps.
• Parents must determine when a child is ready to get a smartphone and have a talk with their kids about the use of the smartphone.
• How to use a smartphone can be a part of necessary parenting skills.

What we should consider in using smartphones at school
• When you receive messages on your smartphone at school it can interrupt your attention for a considerable amount of time.
• It is a bad idea to take phones away from students because students will think of their phones throughout the day, and make them less concentrated. Students can also forget their phones after school.
• When school tasks are digital, they can be solved anywhere and anytime with a smartphone.
• Smartphones have many useful features such as calculator and camera. There can also be downloaded several apps that are used in teaching.
• It can take pictures of smartboards or tables if you do not have time to write notes.
• Smartphones can be like a Swiss army knife.
• Smartphones contain several sensors that can provide interesting data for learning.
• It would be a good idea to have a group of students –super users of smartphones- who could teach teachers how smartphones could be used for their teaching.

Article in Tekniken i skolan -journal

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Nordplus project Beyond technology made the front page of Tekniken i skolan #3, a journal for teachers in technology.

Vad använder ungarna egentligen telefonen till? (What do kids do with their phones?) https://liu.se/cetis/nyhetsbrev/2017-3-vad-anvander-tfn.shtml

Link to #3 of Tekniken i skolan https://liu.se/cetis/nyhetsbrev/2017-3.shtml

Tekniken i skolan– edited by Centrum för tekniken i skolan, 4 issues a year. Both e-version and paper version (9000 copies) and is also distributed in paper to every school in Sweden. Issue #3, was also distribute to all delegates at the biannual teacher conference Tekniken i skolan.

You can prescribe to Tekniken i skolan here https://liu.se/cetis/nyhetsbrev/prenumeration.shtml

Beyond Technology at the AVPC conference, 17.-18.6.2017, Aalborg

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Our project was shared at the annual Association for Visual Pedagogies Conference (http://www.avpc2017.aau.dk/) in three research presentations.

The project leader Kathrin Otrel-Cass (Aalborg University, Denmark) presented with a student from Sofiendalskole, Monica Sun. The presentation was entitled: Primary school students as co-researchers. Kathrin and Monica were sharing stories about students producing video recordings to share their insights into technology use. The main idea was that videos allow students to select and identify things that are important to them.

Dorina Gnaur (Denmark) presented a paper on digital didactic designs. Here, digital media play a decisive role in connecting students accross various learning and action spaces making the learning process follow the learner. In the case of school children, this would mean connecting activities outside school with what is going on in class and taking the teaching out of the classroom, in real life. Videos are an excellent means of transporting rich data across these spaces.

 

Riikka Hohti (Finland) talked in her presentation about children and smartphones in class. She used the concept of entanglement to think about the relationality and interdependencies of children’s digital activity. She also talked about the affective dimensions of boredom, addiction and vulnerability with the help of photographs and narratives.

Learning from children

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A group of 7.th grade children from Sofiendalsskolen agreed on including me in a group on social media so that I could learn to use these media the way the children are using it. Snapchat and Messenger came up as the most popular among children, and we agreed that Messenger was most appropriate because it saved the posts, whereas Snapachat could only be used for instant postings that could not be saved. I wanted to learn from the children how it was like to be part of a group on social media. We agreed to call the group “My mobile my life” and post things about what they do with technology. Here are some examples from Messenger:


creating a group mood


private use of my mobile


school use on a field trip


school use on a field trip

My experience was that the children were helpful in showing and allowing me to try out being part of the type of communication they were experts in. I learned that Snapchat is a way of sending momentary impressions to keep the contact to one another as if to reassure one another of being there somewhere. Chats and videos on Snapchat can contain some information or exchange, but mostly it is a way to ‘wave’ to one another and maintain the sense of who’s around? Messenger is used for communication and for messages with more content or information or questions, etc.

What I also learned, was that you, as an adult, can be allowed to visit children’s favorite media, but you remain a visitor and better not pretend otherwise. I made some attempts to mimic their playful ways of interacting, and they were kind enough to play back, but such attempts never live on for very long. I am however grateful to have been allowed to peep inside and get a feeling of how youth communicate on their social media of choice. So far, the way it makes sense to me, is that social media gives children an opportunity to create psychological and social presence and maintain a sense of belonging. But then again, this is an outsider’s view, the truth is with the users…

Recording films on mobile phones gives students voice

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What we did

We asked students to make videos where they share with us how they use their mobile phones. We asked them to do this either on their phones or using video cameras they had. We received a selection of videos – not from all children – but from the children who felt comfortable to share their stories and often from students who worked together as a group. The production of videos didn’t seem to be too complicated for the students, the video material was at times edited and prepared at quite a sophisticated level.

 

Our reflection on how it went

  • We used students’ videos in an attempt to work closer with them and to identify different opportunities for dialogue
  • We felt that video productions orchestrated by children provide more opportunities for ‘giving voice’
  • The video productions allowed the children to give insights also into creative interpretations of young people’s experiences, feelings and how they see themselves operating amongst adults
  • However, we are aware that this is still an orchestrated process, largely steered by adults (researchers/teachers) and their interests and categories (James 2007)
  • Students have acted within the bounds of defined school community practices

 

Take away message for researchers

Young people need to have more opportunities to share with researchers (adults) their ideas to show what they know and can do.

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Recording films on mobile phones gives children and young people the opportunity to select and capture, edit and share stories in creative and personal ways.

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Films produced this way provide an opportunity to discuss and find out more, about a given topic but also about the person/s. and their ideas. We found this worked really well when we asked children to tell us about the role mobile phones play in their lives.

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