Is it time to ban children from using smart phones?
Maybe - but what if there was a way to control phone use but help your children learn at the same time?
Lock & Learn™ is a handy app, which allows parents to control a child’s phone by locking it for pre-determined times at key periods during the day.
The child has the ability to unlock it by answering some multiple choice questions from an existing database of thousands of key stage questions developed by teachers. (Education Quizzes)
Phone use is a real worry for most parents but this app is a ground breaking way to allow the child to still have access to their phone (and the safety this offers them) but the access is time restricted. The child has to answer a series of multiple choice questions after a given time in order to return to whatever they were doing on their phone.
If the child spends homework time whatsapping their best friend or trawling Instagram or Facebook the parent can simply block them from their device, not giving them the opportunity to answer questions to gain access
Phones are useful, gone are the days when children went out and came back at dusk without the parents having a clue where they were but its all about balance. The kids want their phones to connect with their world but the parents equally want the children to have phones so they can contact them at any one time and know they are safe.
Lock and Learn™ is a catalyst whereby children can learn that sometimes you have to do something you don’t like (answer questions) to get long term rewards (phone use).
A quick trawl of the internet brings up numerous sites extolling the virtues of quizzes for learning.
• increased student participation
• lowered failure rates
• improved exam scores
• better overall course grades
Taking part in quizzes strengthens memory, and aids long-term memory retention so really is a win, win situation.
In this study the results indicate that there is an improvement in student performance of 6.41% of a standard deviation in schools that have introduced a mobile phone ban.
The difficulty is how to allow children the access to the benefits and safety that phones offer whilst gaining the positive impact a phone ban can have?
Lock and Learn is the answer, parents can set time schedules during lessons and homework time where the child's apps are not visible. When the lessons are completed parents can then set times where the child can retrieve their apps back after and age appropriate teacher written quiz has been completed.