KITCHENER — Cellphones will be banned from Ontario classroom starting this September, but many are still unsure how the policy will play out.
Marcel O'Gorman, Founding Director of Critical Media Lab at University of Waterloo told the Mike Farwell show on 570NEWS, there isn't enough research done on the subject.
O'Gorman said the research usually cited on the issue of school cellphone bans comes from a UK study from the London School of Economics.
The study found a 6.14 per cent improvement in test scores and approximately 12 per cent improvement in low achievement students.
"I'm mean it's just one study and it is in the UK and its only on test scores, so --- it's a good study, I'm mean it's solid research -- but it could be more comprehensive, it could be more localized for us."
O'Gorman does acknowledge that while cellphones could provide learning opportunities, they aren't really designed with that in mind.
"They're designed for personal use and they're designed for consumption, so the students using these phones are being targeted by companies who are trying to extract their attention from them."
Wherever you fall on issue of phones in the classroom, he reminds people it ultimately up to teachers to decide.
"The idea of a phone ban is kind of a political maneuver. There's no phone ban, it's going to be up to individual school boards and schools and teachers to come up with their own policies, so in that sense nothing has really changed."
While cellphones will formally be banned by the Ford government, teachers can be granted exceptions.
