My topic proposal question that I plan to research is, Cellphones cause major distractions in learning environments in United States school systems. I am interested in this topic because I feel as technology is becoming more prominent and most students have easy access to cellphones that it is not only distracting the student using the device, but other students as well. I personally have a cellphone and through grade school and continued through college, I have experienced personal distraction from myself and others from the use of cellphones when the teacher is instructing and educating. I feel that since I have such a personal experience on it on an everyday basis that it will make for a more time and research put into it. I feel like it is not all bad to have cellphones I just fell like that there should be restrictions and be continued out, because in most cases there are rules they just are not enforced. Overall, the basis of my paper will be about how cellphones cause distractions during supplemental instruction time in the classroom, not only on a personal level but it distracts more than just one person around you and that causes an overall problem. 


The article starts out by giving helpful background information on when technology was first integrated into the classroom and what universities accepted this first. Also it gives statistics that deal directly with studies about students who used cellphones in the class room. It end the article with a view based on factuality and student differences on the stance and how each one looks at the issue. 

This article was really a study done and has collected data and tables that represent the effects of cellphones in the classrooms. The Authors lay out all the facts of the surveys and then break them down and show the relations of the number of text vs. the success in the classroom. 

All three of the authors that wrote and conducted these studies are all employed by different universities. I think this gives a broad outlook and makes it less biased because one is from New York, North Carolina, and Texas. So this gives lots of flexibility and makes the data be less opinionated and confined to one region. Also they all have personal experience because they are all facilitators in the classroom. 

This article outlines how a certain teacher in Iowa punishes students if caught with a cellphone or if it goes off in her class. She believes in discipline and that it should be carried out if you break her rules. It talks about how to stay firm to get the point across so it eliminated distractions in the classroom. 

Something's that she says I question, because some of her punishments results taking the students away from instruction and I feel that is just as distracting as cellphones. But I do believe that she has good intentions when it comes to sticking to punishment so kids will know she means business.

The author is a professor in Iowa, so she does have personal experience with students and the distractions of cell phones in the classroom. Since she is a little older I feel like that she has some bias towards cellphones because she is older fashioned when it comes to newer things. 

One of the main points that the author uses to get her message across is how looking at a cellphone screen all the time induces "Undeveloped planning skills". She expresses that its causing kids to have really bad procrastination skills and is hurting kids from doing homework and classwork. 

She states that it is making kids basically have learning disabilities when it comes to having cellphones as distractions. When most people think about learning disabilities that can raise eyebrows. Also she questions parenting skills when it comes to the issues and most people do not appreciate parenting advice and especially when it comes to the issues of cellphones because it is such a new skill that not everyone knows how to punish, or so the author of this article thinks so. 

The author of this is a teacher of higher education and she seems to have a good grasp and background on the issue and this is also a more recent article and is around the time it first started integrating into the classroom. So this shows that she noticed a problem from the beginning. 

My argument is argumentative because many people and a lot of students feel like cellphones in the classroom is helpful and a necessity for them for so called educational reasoning but from my perspective I feel like it is a major distraction for not only the student themselves but everyone around them and that definitely includes the teacher. Some of the articles were not what I partially believed in and felt like though I can use it to help get my point across in different ways to help appeal to the entire audience as a whole. 

