As an educational psychologist, I was asked to work with a class, which had severe discipline issues. This was the starting point of the project. Based on my previous research on “Young people, mobile phones and school” I came up with the idea of using mobile phones to get into these young people space, to get their attention, taking advantage of areas where they are competent (digital communication through mobile phones) and try to promote their motivation towards school activities.

One key aspect is that this project started as an answer to a request at my work place. It is a ‘work on progress’ project. The project phases and strategies were not pre-defined; they were being defined as the work progressed.

Some reflections:

Just because I came into the classroom and told students to pick up their mobile phones and to use them, no magic happened. It was difficult to get their attention. It took well-planned activities with specific tasks and times, to have them engaged and to produce some results.

One should not expect that just the fact of using mobile phones in classroom would do the trick to motivate them and come around indiscipline. Using mobile phones has some impact; they feel valued and comfortable using a language they master. However, getting around issues such as following rules, teamwork and focusing attention on a specific task, requires a sustained effort and well-articulated strategies from all teachers that work with the class.

Nevertheless, the students' reaction to the project was quite positive (see questionnaire results). Almost all the references were enthusiastic. 
To "create web pages” was the task that most of them did not like. This has a specific reason. The school internet connection is very slow and school computers have a hard time getting the job done. It is difficult to resist the frustration of very, very slow navigation and constant breakdown. Some o f the work had to be done at home.

Teachers’ reaction was not the best. After all, they asked me to work with the class on discipline issues and all I did was to ask students to use their mobile phones to express what they think and feel about school. Not exactly what they had in mind. After some weeks, some teachers approached me and expressed their concerns: students were only going to complaint about school and maybe I could just tell them how to behave.

It is not yet possible to claim that this approach significantly and consistently reduced disruptive behaviour and increased students’ motivation in school. However, we can say that all the fourteen students actively and willingly engaged in the proposed activities and produced contents that reflected specific competences, such as the ability to identify and describe a situation and to express personal opinions.