Latest news with #Yondr
Yahoo
21-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Charity hopes to ban smartphones in schools
A Bristol-based charity is hoping to make the city the first in the UK where smartphones are banned from all classrooms. The charity Papaya - Parents Against Phone Addiction in Young Adolescents - is calling on parents to delay giving their children smartphones until at least the age of 14. Campaigners believe this could significantly improve young people's mental health. The organisation is working with more than 100 schools in Bristol and has secured commitments from 10 institutions to implement stricter policies. Dr Susie Davies, founder of Papaya, said: "We want them to have a phone-free environment in schools so they concentrate on their learning, but also socialising in breaktime." Papaya predicts that by the start of the next school term, a majority of Bristol's secondary schools could be signed up to their smartphone-free initiative. Dr Davies, who is also a Bristol-based GP, said: "We want Bristol to be a smart phone-free city, where children don't get their first smart phone until they're 14." Papaya is supporting schools to enforce phone-free environments through tools like Yondr pouches and lock boxes. "It gives young people an extra two to three years of childhood," Dr Davies explained. "Time to play, to enjoy each other's company, and to concentrate on learning and social development without the distraction of constant notifications." More news stories for Bristol Watch the latest Points West Listen to the latest news for Bristol What began as a small local initiative is now part of a national movement, with communities across the UK joining in. "Smartphone-free childhood is becoming a viral movement," said Dr Davies. "Parents and school leaders are increasingly aware of the link between phones and poor mental health." Papaya has created a template letter inviting schools to sign up to the campaign and encouraging teachers and headteachers to get involved. One of the early adopters is The Orchard School in north Bristol, where headteacher Melanie Sweet introduced locking pouches for phones a year ago. She said the impact has been transformative. "We've been delighted," said Ms Sweet. "We've seen a drop in 'corridor defiance', which is when students refuse to hand over phones, and a huge increase in engagement with our personal development programmes. "Pupils are joining more clubs and break times are now social, happy spaces." The school's trust is now recommending that parents delay smartphones until secondary students reach Year 10. "It's not a ban, it's a recommendation," said Ms Sweet. "But as a mother and a headteacher, I feel like we've preserved a little corner of childhood. I'd urge other parents to consider it." Some teenagers have also told the BBC that growing up without a smartphone has felt like a relief rather than a restriction. "I think I'm just less addicted to my phone than a lot of my friends," said Sofia, 16. "Because I didn't have social media drilled into my life early on, I don't depend on it. I can go out without it and not worry." Issy, aged 16, said her parents gave her a "brick" phone with very restricted internet and which shuts down at 19:00 every day. When asked about how she felt about her parents' decision, she said it has given her more time to spend on her hobbies. "I'm quite relieved," she said. "I've got a very different relationship with my phone." Dr Davies, who said she sees the effects of screen addiction daily in her clinic, believes the time for action is now. "There's real appetite for change, from teachers, parents, and students alike," she said. Follow BBC Bristol on Facebook, X and Instagram. Send your story ideas to us on email or via WhatsApp on 0800 313 4630. Kids exposed to social media posts about violence and suicide People 'will find a way' to harmful content - teens Instagram still posing serious risks to children, campaigners say Papaya Parents
Yahoo
14-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Bill that would limit student's access to cell phones in school takes next steps to becoming law
A bill that bans all cell phone use by students during school hours was passed by the Senate and is another step closer to becoming law. [DOWNLOAD: Free WHIO-TV News app for alerts as news breaks] Senate Bill 158 passed in the Senate with 30 yes votes to only two no votes. The bill calls for all public school districts to adopt a policy that would prohibit students to use cell phones during the school day. The bill still needs to be introduced and passed by the House before it would head to Governor Mike DeWine's desk to be signed into law. If the bill were to pass the House, it would likely be signed by DeWine, as he posted support for the Senate's passing of the bill Wednesday. DeWine has also previously voiced support for the bill to become law, as previously reported on News Center 7. DeWine posted on X Wednesday that he 'commends the Ohio Senate for passing Senate Bill 158.' RELATED: DeWine supports proposed bill aimed at banning students from using cellphones during school day TRENDING STORIES: Newlyweds receive Amazon gift cards before groom's deployment, company says they won't honor them Can you help? Police searching for 2 baby chick theft suspects Popeyes manager shot in drive-thru over burnt biscuits Some Miami Valley schools have already implemented measures designed to limit student cell phone usage during the day, as previously reported on News Center 7. Districts, including Beavercreek City Schools, started using Yondr pouches to hold students' cell phones during the school day. 'We think it's a great move for our schools to remove probably one of the biggest distractions our kids face every day,' Paul Otten, Beavercreek City Schools superintendent, said. [SIGN UP: WHIO-TV Daily Headlines Newsletter]
Scotsman
12-05-2025
- General
- Scotsman
No more snapping up bargains on Vinted during Modern Studies
Portobello High School will be first in Scotland to introduce a zero-phone policy for pupils. Pupils will place their devices into magnet-locked Yondr pouches for the duration of the school day. Pictured are S3 pupils Julia and Carly (Picture: Lisa Ferguson) Well done everyone involved in the decision to pilot phone-free classes in two Edinburgh schools. Sign up to our daily newsletter Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to Edinburgh News, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... The city's education chief, Councillor Joan Griffiths, the teachers of Portobello and Queensferry High Schools and, of course, the students and their parents deserve a huge round of applause for having the courage to go phone-free. As a fellow smartphone addict, I know how difficult it is to contemplate even half-an-hour without my iPhone within easy reach. I can't begin to contemplate how I would cope from 9am to 3.30pm. The students won't have to part with their precious phones. They have to store them in Yondr pouches which are locked and unlocked magnetically, but they will be able to carry them from class to class. I am sure there will be the odd student who works out a hack to access their precious phone when they are not supposed to, but the majority will comply with the new rules. And what a difference it will make. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad There will be no more WhatsApp notifications pinging during French class. No sneaky Signal chats to distract from algebra. No surreptitious Instagram stories, no Snapchat, and definitely no snapping up a bargain on Vinted while the Modern Studies teacher has her back turned. It will be just like the old days. Or maybe not. I fervently hope that Edinburgh's pilot proves to be a huge success and every school in the city locks up phones during the school day, but no-one can pretend that schools can ignore the digital revolution that has only started. The Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) revealed last week that there were 31 instances of pupils caught cheating using artificial intelligence (AI) last year, compared to none in 2023. That may seem far too few to get hot and bothered about, but AI is developing very quickly and many schoolkids are already well versed at using chatbots such as ChatGPT. My granddaughter uses it to create crochet patterns, and I am sure that many, many students now turn to the app on their phone for help with their homework. But it is AI's potential to change how and what our children learn that education chiefs need to be thinking about, rather than how many second-year pupils asked Grok to write an essay on human rights. Two years ago, I wrote here about Dr Geoffrey Hinton, the former Edinburgh University student known as the 'Godfather" of AI. He had just stood down from his role at Google, warning that AI systems like ChatGPT were quite scary. 'Right now, they're not more intelligent than us, as far as I can tell. But I think they soon may be,' he said. If that happens, then traditional education – even when done on an iPad – will be of little use in the future. As AI develops, so the world of work will change. Legal firms, for example, will not need a team of young lawyers to check contracts and other legal documents if a chatbot can do it in seconds. We need to teach our youngsters how to use AI, not so they can cheat, but so they can succeed.
Scotsman
07-05-2025
- Scotsman
Why million-dollar question about mobile phones in schools is about to be answered
Sign up to our daily newsletter – Regular news stories and round-ups from around Scotland direct to your inbox Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... Amid growing political and parental unease about the prevalence of smartphone use in Scotland's schools, it should come as no surprise that the City of Edinburgh Council's decision to impose an outright ban at two secondaries as part of a pilot scheme has been widely welcomed. As the first local authority to roll out the use of lockable Yondr phone pouches for pupils across S1 to S6 during the school day, it hopes the headline-grabbing policy will increase focus on learning and 'improve wellbeing.' But will it actually work? Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Yondr, a US start-up that gained prominence in live entertainment venues, has been pivoting to the education sector. It has sold millions of dollars' worth of its goods to US schools, and increasingly, British classrooms are in its sights. In recent months, it commissioned the polling firm, Public First, to survey teachers and parents about the impact of smartphones on learning, earning press coverage that dovetailed with the prevailing cultural mood. Regrettably, however, there has been little scrutiny of the effectiveness of Yondr's phone-free strategy, and the council's plans to monitor the pilot – a spokesman told me this would consist of 'anecdotal feedback' from teachers and staff – looks unlikely to change that. Mobile phones are locked into 'Yondr' pouches before people enter a phone-free zone (Picture: Angela Weiss) | AFP via Getty Images Harmful effects? A paper produced last year by Yondr cited 'independent research' which asserted that, in US schools using its pouches, academic success rates increased up to 6.27 per cent, but it's unclear who conducted the research, or whether it was peer-reviewed. The same paper cites two academic studies on phone-free policies, neither of which focused on Yondr; one even noted that student achievement gains 'should be understood not as much as a result of the prohibition of mobile phones per se', but the enforcement of using mobiles for learning purposes only. More widely, there has been little detailed research into the impact of school mobile bans. A September 2024 London School of Economics study found 'the results are mixed, with methods being contested and some studies showing no benefits or even harmful effects', while a University of Birmingham study in February identified no difference in outcomes for students who attend schools that ban smartphones, in terms of mental wellbeing, physical activity and sleep, and attainment in English and maths. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad 'We need to do more than focus on schools alone, and consider phone use within and outside of school, across a whole day and the whole week,' explained Dr Victoria Goodyear, the study's lead author. Preparing children for high-tech world This is the real challenge, and it is incumbent on parents and wider society to meet it. It is right to restrict pupils' use of smartphones in schools, but it's hard to see how an outright ban will address issues that persist outside the classroom. To that end, the well-intentioned introduction of the Yondr pouches will only be as effective as the wider educational context; schools have an obligation to help prepare children for an ever-shifting, technology-enabled world, and if they can teach self-regulation, responsible digital citizenship, and inform pupils about misinformation and algorithmic bias, the merits of reducing the amount of time spent using devices become easier to comprehend.
The Herald Scotland
07-05-2025
- The Herald Scotland
Inside Scotland's first 'phone-free' school in Edinburgh
After a quick final check of notifications devices are inserted into the fabric cases — where they'll remain until the end of the school day. As pupils move past reception and through the atrium, they lock the magnetic pin on their pouch at locking stations fixed to walls on either side of the hall. It's the first time this technology, developed and patented by American company Yondr, has been introduced in any school in Scotland, although it has been rolled out in around 250 schools elsewhere in Britain. The pilot project promises to make Portobello High a 'phone free' environment with fewer distractions, with a second Edinburgh school on the other side of the city, Queensferry High, also implementing the change from next Wednesday, May 14. But will it work? The bold new policy comes on the back of efforts to discourage phone use during class time, which have largely proved ineffective. Portobello High School headteacher Greg McDowall told The Herald there was now the need for a "physical barrier" between pupils and their phones. "The mobile phone is an incredibly addictive tool and device and it's a lot of responsibility to put on a young person to self-manage when they check notifications, apps and so on," he said. Portobello pupils with their phone pouches at a locking station (Image: The Herald) "So we're taking that responsibility away from them and actually to make their classroom experience more enjoyable, distraction free and try and improve concentration levels." Nationally, he said, strong evidence was emerging of the negative health and wellbeing impact of continuous phone use which supported this level of restriction. Asked whether putting the onus on pupils to lock away their devices risked the system not being properly enforced, Mr McDowall said this had been considered and adaptations could be made during the pilot. 'We have considered that through dialogue and looking at where this policy has been used in other countries and try to learn from that," he said. "There will be checks and balances of all these approaches, but for us the pouch is really key to this; we can't have a situation going forward where the pouch becomes redundant and we rely on just the phone in the bag. 'Consistency is absolutely key to the success of the implementation of this particular policy. "We believe that long term this is a transformational change for our school and for our young people to free up that learning experience and give them the best experience possible.' The decision to introduce Yondr pouches follows nine months of extensive engagement with parents, staff and pupils. City of Edinburgh Council said the cost of this was commercially sensitive information but told The Herald the pilot has been financed through a range of funding streams including funds earmarked to purchase the pouches and voluntary contributions from parents. Nancy Rigg, chair of Portobello High School parent council, said: 'This is a pilot, there are probably still things we need to learn. "It's the first in Scotland but it's the start of the direction of travel for this school. It had to be what is right for Portobello High; there has to be a consultation to work out what's best for your school, this won't be a roll-out everywhere exactly as is. "And I think it's important that the pupils, parents and carers were all part of this conversation. This wasn't something the school decided to do, it was something we all looked at and shaped to get to where we are today. "It's disruptive in class if teachers are constantly dealing with issues to do with people having phones when they're not supposed to, it takes away from teaching time. You can deal with it but it doesn't mean the education in class is focused because it's constantly interrupted. Read More: "We looked at lots of different options, what this one does is allows pupils to have their own phone during the day, we're not taking hundreds of phones and the school is responsible for them, but it means they're not accessible during the school day." Rigg believes pupils shunning the new system will be "few and far between". She said: 'There's been a huge consultation with the pupils. It went to the pupil parliament – the pupils have their own parliament here which is about 80 odd representatives – so this has gone through lots of conversations, lots of iterations. I wouldn't say everybody is fully on board with it, but I think there's been enough support." Councillor Joan Griffiths, the council's education convener, hoped to see the policy introduced at every secondary school in Edinburgh, although each school is left to decide their individual mobile phone policy. "There will be things we think we've maybe not got quite right, so it's a pilot and we will learn," Cllr Griffiths said. "Queensferry is next week and I would really hope that other schools will come on board and take it forward. 'What I'm hoping for is that children and young people will see the benefits of it, that they go into classrooms, and they're actually having conversations with people, they're talking to people rather than texting people and they will get used to that. 'Pupils are really, really excited about it all and I'm hoping we can keep that excitement with them. I think young people are up for trying something new.'
