School Cellphone Ban Spawns Thriving Niche Storage Market

http://mashable.com/2012/05/26/gadget-storage-trucks/

by ssclafani • 14 years ago

17 29 14 years ago

jaems33• 14 years ago

I experienced something similar near Yankee stadium.

They don't allow men to bring bags into the stadium. But they don't have a bag storage service (at least the last time I went). So random businesses around it provide bag checks for a nominal fee.

Funnily enough, they allow women to bring large bags and purses inside.

maybird• 14 years ago

Has anyone tried to contest this rule as an illegal form of discrimination?

jcmhn• 14 years ago

Men are the oppressor gender and therefore cannot be the victims of discrimination. Nice try, you dirty misogynist.

petercooper2• 14 years ago

Hats off to the entrepreneurship here but the reason it's needed in the first place is a farce. Schools should get a grip rather than be happy their students get to fork out $22+ per month to work around their silly restrictions.

keithpeter5• 14 years ago

I understand what you are saying, but attention diversion is a problem with teenagers, I can tell you. They have grasshopper minds even without shiny rectangles.

unimpressive3• 14 years ago

On the one hand, I think cell phones are overrated, on the other, I'm mildly disgusted by the presence of metal detectors and bag checks, with confiscation involved if phones are detected.

qxcv• 14 years ago

In my experience, if there's a kid sitting in high school who's not interested in the lesson then they'll either stare at the front of the room with their eyes glazed over or start fidget with something (usually phones or pencils), the former being the most popular choice since electronics tend to raise the ire of teachers. You are sadly misguided if you think that removing phones will turn previously disinterested students into enthusiastic participants. It certainly will make them angry at having to pay $1 per day for "phone parking", though.

petercooper2• 14 years ago

Agreed, but that's what discipline is for. We weren't allowed to do many things in school (including things as simple as wearing a coat) and the discipline system was set up so everyone knew where they stood and the punishments were clear.

Perhaps they have a discipline problem in schools nowadays, but that doesn't have to become a technology problem.

keithpeter5• 14 years ago

Does anyone have references to the impact of banning electronics on school performance? There is a similar move in the UK.

I like the retail shop storage idea; there is usually a newsagent/sweetshop somewhere near most large secondary schools.

shabble• 14 years ago

Seems like a really neat solution to an (in hindsight) obvious problem. Makes me think of the guy with a camper-van full of PCs dedicated to form filling parked near the Chinese consulate in New York: https://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/01/04/144636898/a-man-a...

I think in the prior example, they actually complained about the publicity they were getting because it clued in competitors, without significantly benefiting them, because their market was going to walk past the truck anyway.

Keverw• 14 years ago

Kids aren't even allow to bring phones to school and keep them hidden in pocket? wow... When I went to school you could use them at lunch. Is this starting to happen all over the US or just New York? I'm in Ohio, currently. In class you had to keep them in your pocket or purse and have the ringer off, else teacher would take it and hold it till the end of the day. Wow. Schools are starting to seem more and more like police states.

I would like to see schools embrace small gadgets, instead of banning them, some how. I mean they do have lots of educational value if you want to use it for that.

vsviridov• 14 years ago

Still have doubts that schools in US are, essentially, jails?

unimpressive3• 14 years ago

No.

Any ideas on how to fix it?

spindritf• 14 years ago

Not jails, storage facilities for kids, cell phone storage is an auxiliary service.

javert2• 14 years ago

Schools that completely ban the possession of cell phones need to offer a way for students to store their phones during the day in the lobby of the school. They could just issue each student a tiny locker with a key.

I have multiple reasons for saying this. One reason of lesser importance (but perhaps more interesting) is: who's to say these trucks aren't copying the flash drives off smartphones?

I'm all for entrepreneurship but society has already decided that education is not up for a free market, so it's not worth haggling over tiny details like this.

lotu• 14 years ago

Who's to say the guy watching the phones for the school isn't copying the flash drives off the smartphones? And honestly why would they? I doubt the contents of a teen's cell phone are very interesting and doing so would endager their business which they take seriously enough to have a 2 million dollar insurance policy on.

javert2• 14 years ago

As I said, the security issue here is interesting to me as somewhat of a "hacker," but not really so important.

However, there definitely are ways to exploit this. For example, the person holding the phones could search for nude pictures, or material in text messages that could be used to blackmail the children (possibly the same thing, not necessarily).

I think having a bunch of "cell phone lockers" in a very public area of a public school would guard against that kind of thing pretty effectively. It would take a conspiracy of school employees to pull it off and really not be worth it.

damncabbage• 14 years ago

Maybe there's also a market for lead-lined phone baggies that students can stash in the bottom of schoolbags.

(If schools are acting like the TSA...)

gouranga• 14 years ago

they should just turn the classrooms into faraday cages. Problem solved and no storage required.

Back in my day we didn't have phones in class (they were too big and expensive). We still played up, did little work and achieved nothing :)

If the teachers gave a toss and were engaging, it would be a different story.

Kluny• 14 years ago

Why on earth don't the schools run this service themselves? Instead of confiscating the phones, hold onto them in the same way the third-party companies do. They're always complaining how they don't have enough money.

School Cellphone Ban Spawns Thriving Niche Storage Market

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