Managing cell phone usage at school is a tricky topic. We have some teachers who’d like to ban them outright, but we also have a growing number of parents who are expecting to be able to communicate with their kids–to organize pickups and carpooling during the day for example. The phones can be great for data-collection and documentation in classes, and a lot of my upper level math students prefer the Desmos app to using their graphical calculators.
Our current compromise is that middle schoolers have to leave their phones in the front office, where they can check them at lunch time or check them out if a teacher wants them to use them.
The high schoolers are allowed to keep their phones with them, but have to put them in a basket at the front of the classroom. Since they don’t like piling them into the basket, I experimented with the CNC machine to cut some plywood into a cell-phone shelf.
The shelf can hold about 30 phones, and I can easily see how many phones are on there from across the room, so I’d say this one worked out pretty well.