Canadian high school principals try to use cell phone jammer

Principal Steve Gray of Port Hardy Secondary School on Vancouver Island, who bought the jammer from an online dealer in China, said he had to try something given that kids were still using their phones despite a cellphone ban at the school. Apparently, this jamming device is his attempt

While the experiment was short-lived, the controversy speaks to the growing problem in schools, particularly high schools, of rampant cellphone use during class time.

Donnelly also points out that controlling the devices is important because they can be a mechanism for everything from cyber bullying to passing around answers to a test.

So the issue is not only about educating children on the appropriate use of cellphones and other technological devices, but also about making sure parents understand the rules at their child's school, she said.

Why use the gsm jammer?

"We noticed what we perceived as a growing negative impact of cell phone use on student learning and particularly student engagement," said Comstock Park High School Principal Steve Gough. "Cell phones can be a powerful tool to assist people in accessing information, but they can also be a powerful distraction."

University students are quite positive about use of smartphones and laptops in class and believe they can assist learning and are critical to their safety, so should be left on at all times. And when a cell phone goes off in class, students prefer that instructors ignore it, handle it light heartedly through humor, or talk to the student in private after class. In contrast, most U.S. faculty we interviewed had specific rules in their syllabi for utilizing all digital devices in class with penalties for rule violations.2 Surprisingly popular were total bans on students’ phones and laptops.

Too many students are using their cellphones to talk, visit and check out of what’s being taught in the classroom. We need to correct this now. Cellphones can be a great learning tool, but parents need to lay down the law about how and when to use them.

State DOC officials are still trying other avenues to fix the cell phone issue. DOC is working with a Maryland-based company on a $1.5 million contract to install a system that "allows authorized calls to go through but blocks others in a precisely defined target area." That system will be installed by the end of the month.

If jamming devices fail to be properly regulated, similar to bidirectional amplifiers (BDAs), we will suffer a more severe uncontrollable clutter that has driven the industry to chase the overabundance of interfering signals emitted by the FCC-approved gadgets. It’s easy to inadvertently create a jammer. Turn the gain control to maximum in both the uplink and downlink amplifier and have no regard for the isolation between the donor and redistribution antenna system. The level of white noise generated by this apparatus is at least as damaging and as great a hazard to public-safety radio systems as any jamming device yet designed. Typically, BDAs are installed without proper supervision and turned to the maximum gain to provide the greatest coverage while, unknowingly, this two-way amp is nothing but a broadband generator radiating into an outside antenna.