A high-school science teacher has received a five-day suspension without pay for using a jammer in his classroom to block students’ cell-phone signals.
He can consider himself lucky, however, because he had actually violated federal law.
Dean Liptak was fed up with his students’ phone activities disrupting their attention, and he did not think the school district’s confiscation plan was any less distracting. He brought the device in to keep their noses in their books instead of on their screens, WTSP reports.
Unfortunately, despite Liptak’s claims that the jammer was only blocking reception in his classroom, it was actually affecting communication with the on-campus cell tower. This drew the attention of Verizon, which alerted school officials to the jammer’s presence.
In the suspension letter, district Superintendent Kurt Browning says that Liptak “posed a serious risk to critical safety communications as well as the possibility of preventing others from making 911 calls.” It also cites a previous, unspecified “lack of judgment” on Liptak’s part concerning “an instructional worksheet with inappropriate content” that he used with students.
In Liptak’s reply, he said that after conferring with a police deputy, he was under the impression that owning and using jammers did not violate state law. And they may very well not, but the FCC specifically says that “it is a violation of federal law to use a cell jammer or similar devices that intentionally block, jam, or interfere with authorized radio communications such as cell phones, police radar, GPS, and Wi-Fi.”
“My intent for using the device was to keep students academically focused on schoolwork,” Liptak writes. “It is counter-productive to stop instruction and lose academic focus when I have to tell a student to put his or her cellphone away. [. . .] If a student refuses to relinquish his or her cell phone, I have to write a referral and lose additional academic focus in my classroom.”
Verizon is not pressing charges, so Liptak will only have the unpaid week to deal with.
This is just one more skirmish in the battle for attention between people and screens, and wearables like Apple’s smartwatch will only add to the conflict. Checking your watch and being on your phone are two of the most socially frowned-upon things you can do, and combining them like the Apple Watch will only inspire more stern head shakes, finger wags, and utterances of, “Are you listening to me right now?”
Liptak’s jammer was only illegal, but it was overkill. In these cases, it falls to students to be respectful and teachers to be engaging. We do not need to bring the Feds into this.
Evan Killham is a freelance writer who lives in Nebraska and isn’t interested in football, so he has plenty of time to play and think about video games. He has written for Bitmob and GamesBeat and sometimes, he even goes outside. But not too often because he’s heard there are bees out there. Occasionally, companies send free units for review. Evan subscribes to Cult of Mac’s Reviews Policy and also does not keep the items he receives for possible coverage.
24 responses to “Cell jamming gives science teacher an important legal lesson”
“Serious risk to safety communications” because kids couldn’t call 911. What has this world come to? How many times has a kid had to call 911 in the classroom? And what did kids do before the days of cell phones? Good lord…
It doesn’t say kids and you know that because you didn’t quote it. It says it was disrupting a tower and that could prevent everyone who would go through that tower from calling 9-1-1 or whatever else needed to be done. It also may have blocked other phones from other providers from contacting their towers depending on how far the jamming reached.
Well, when I was in high school we had a student come in with a weapon, a person sneak into the school and shoot up and two teachers had heart attacks. This was 10 years ago, but even then, teachers did not have phones in their classrooms that could dial the outside world (who knows why). That meant that if something happened it was dependent on a student to call the outside world for help.
And even if it’s not during the school day, what happens if the teacher leaves the jammer on by accident, knocking out cell service for a chuck of the school and a kid gets hurt during an after school activity? Suddenly no one knows why the gym doesn’t have service and a kid isn’t getting medical attention because there is an unknown jammer in place.
The bottom line is that it is illegal to use jammers. If you disagree with that, fine, but it doesn’t change the law. But don’t pretend that there is never a reason for students to use a phone during school hours.
For 30 years, every single classroom I have worked in has had telephones or intercoms.
Kids shouldn’t have phones in classrooms, as a teacher they are the bane of my life. Ask pretty much every teacher and they can tell you they are hurting our abilities to do our job, and hurting kids entire reason for being there.
Jammers are illegal, but something needs to be done about this.
Well by your logic if you are ever stranded on a road at night by all means do NOT pick up your phone and call for help. After all before cellphones you didn’t do that.. Good Lord!!! Times change, we should change with them, get out of the 1950s and realize that there is a greater expectation on the part of students, parents AND faculty to have that ability if and when it is needed.
GOOD LORD…. look at the number of school shootings where it has been students and teachers calling from within the school that called the police and summoned help. Before “the days of cell phones” way back in the 1990s kids DIED. That’s what they did. Go back and think about a student on a football field that collapses and someone has to run to god knows where to call for help. Now anyone at the scene can dial immediately.
Teachers need to be engaging them better and realize times have changed. You might want to realize times have changed too and stop being scared of them
People can’t seem to live without them. Funny for those of us who grew up without one. Go to a restaurant … few people are talking but 75% are tapping away on their damn phone. In classrooms, I’d tell the kids, surrender your phone or fail the class. A friend of mine found that his son had cheated in almost every class in his senior year before graduating HS … by using his iPhone to text questions and answers back and forth to classmates. Classrooms need to have a Faraday cage around them.
God forbid the world today be different than the one you grew up in. If kids are cheating, they’re just finding new ways to do it. Cellphones haven’t caused cheating, they’re just a different tool than the ones used by your generation to cheat.
Haha! Nice try. Just remember that my generation is the one that invented all the technology that you use from your mother’s basement. We know all about change. Unfortunately your immaturity keeps you from seeing that cell phones CAN cause cheating because the temptation is much to great. Kids are too uncreative to be able to cheat without them. But nice try though.
I never said that cell phones weren’t a temptation, but your arrogance is blinding. Cellphones did not invent cheating. They modernized it, much in the same way that teachers modernized the ways they protect tests from being stolen.
Blaming technology and the younger generation for the ills of society is not only lazy but it’s wrong. Kids cheat at school today and kids cheated 50 years ago.
Oh, and not all us millennials are sitting in their parent’s basements. A lot of us are fighting our way through an economy that your generation ruined to build careers and businesses. You might want to try engaging with us instead of demonizing us.
you guys are too funny. just know that we are headed to our doom while texting
Yeah have to totally agree with Scott here. Your GENERATION may have invented some tech but from your closed minded attitudes I’m wiling to bet you didn’t. You don’t have the creativity or open minded nature to create an entire new way of doing things. But then your generation didn’t do that. Your generation, or at least members of it did create computers and cell phones but then it was the following generation, our generation that changed the world with them. Like it or hate it, the world changed. It seems clear though that your outlook on it hasn’t. You seem like the stereotype that sees the world changing and without really examining ALL of the benefits or ills you’ve decided change is bad and this is why and that’s it. It’s closed minded and the definition of arrogance.
Scott is also right. People have been cheating in school as long as there has been school. People have cheated on tests as long as their have been tests. It’s human nature to look for a competitive advantage in any environment. If we didn’t hunters and gatherers we are descended from wouldn’t have gotten very far.
Now it’s a phone. And yes, of course a smartphone makes it easier to cheat. As with all other forms of cheating it’s up to the teacher/school to figure out ways around it. If technology is the problem technology could easily be a solution. Small cameras in class rooms that would not only help identify and prove cheating from students and make texting and cheating more difficult. But teachers aren’t likely to want that because then they’d have someone over their shoulder as well monitoring what too many of them get up to in class.
Blame the kids, blame the parents, blame everyone else. Teachers are always the same with this. They want to blame everyone and never take a look at their own system and their own behaviors to see where they could change and improve. It’s too easy to blame everyone else
Pathetic. Love how you can diagnose my creativity level from behind a keyboard. THAT’S the problem. Ah, the arrogance of youth and inexperience …
I’m neither that young nor inexperienced. But yes your lack of creative thinking, arrogance, and prejudice against a younger generation that you don’t seem to understand nor want to understand is glaring in its obviousness. You resort to broad generalities and personal attacks to defend your argumen while in the end the premise itself is flawed. You cannot say cellphones cause cheating. Cheating was around before their invention. Therefore the phones did not cause it. They are inanimate objects therefore they neither promote nor attempt to stop cheating. problem is simple times have changed and teachers and the educational system needs to adapt to it. That is not arrogance on my part nor my generations it’s a simple fact of life. When times change, which is undeniable that they have, you must adapt to them or become obsolete or extinct. Fact of life not arrogance.
Nah, you’re arrogant.
Funny how you know … from a comment no less (HAHA!) … my age, my creativity (I have 3 great selling apps in the app store), my understanding of cellular technology (I hold two patents), and all sorts of things. Fact is, you’re a moron behind a keyboard who thinks he knows everything.
Just remember this after you get a little more maturity under your belt: Immaturity is confidence without competence. And you’re full of one with none of the other.
Keep trying. It appears I pressed your buttons. This should be fun!!!
This is good point, raises the question. Why not jam cellphone towers in the school? Well maybe not a jammer per se, but have lined walls to block all cell reception. Have LAN lines hardwired for emergencies and the rest of the non classrooms will have normal reception. I’m with the teacher on this one, kids need to pay attention in class, I’ve worked at Schools and can tell you a mobile is pure distraction, it hinders the learning process.
One in the event of an emergency using a cell to dial 911 could save lives. That’s one huge hole in your argument.
Not sure what you think a LAN is going to do for emergencies, i think you may have meant LAND lines.. as in terrestrial non-wireless corded phones. Good luck with that. Schools in this country are having students bring paper, chalk, hand sanitizer and nearly everything else the class room needs. Where are they going to find the money for hundreds of new landline phones wired into every room that doesn’t already have them and lining walls to block reception?
Again there have and always will be 100s of distractions in school. Part of being the teacher is to…. get this TEACH. Teach them the importance of knowing when the phone is appropriate and when it is not. Hell if they are going to use them in class take advantage of it! Have class room handouts on PDF files they can download and view. This would not only save resources but interact with them in way they want and respond to. Work with change not against it and you’ll have more success and not bankrupt schools in the process. Bottom line is the teacher should have been arrested.
In every school over here, they have LAND lines (sorry, typo). I’m all for technology and embracing it, but clearly there are problems over there with paying attention.
When I went to school, there were no LAND lines and no one had mobiles and guess what, we learnt and never needed to call emergency services. BTW, I agree that the teacher should have been arrested, I can just see his reasons for trying to jam just his classroom.
I’ve actually deployed iPads in a private school and the kids actually use them as educational devices, but I could see how this could get out of control in a public school with kids who are less likely to want to learn vs surfing Facebook etc.
Well where ever “over here” is we’re talking about a teacher in the states with a unique set of challenges and threats
it falls to students to be respectful and teachers to be engaging.
the former is too funny
That’s why I got out of teaching, I had had enough…
“It falls…to teachers to be engaging.” Classrooms are environments intended for instruction under the sole direction of the teacher so assigned; it is not a students’ marketplace of amusements with which teachers need compete. Interestingly, the progression of such tech-related sloppiness in learning environments helps feed sloppiness of logic such as found in this quote.
So you think that teachers are little gods in their classroom with no onus on them at all to engage a student’s mind and get them interested in learning? They are simply there to direct and have absolute control over their pupils? LOL How out dated is your thinking on the subject? I don’t think teachers have had sole direction of a classroom since the early 1900’s. A classroom is under the supervision of a teacher but it’s direction is under the control of the local board of education, the state, the federal government and who knows how many other influences.
A teacher MUST be engaging, that is their responsibility. With or without phones if a teacher is not engaging the minds and attention of their students then the student will learn nothing. With or without a phone in their hand.
I find it telling and amusing that you refer to it as tech-related sloppiness in learning environments. You think that having a text book on an iPad that can be more instructive, more engaging and more likely to get a students attention and have them using it is sloppiness? Of course it’s not. And simply making a personal attack on the commenter to try to refute their statement shows your own lack of information in this area. Seems rather silly too since the commenter you attacked put the onus on both parties to perform their roles in the classroom together and didn’t simply single out teachers as the problem.
Perhaps you simply have a grudge against youth?
If there was a ban on cell phone use in class, were the students also punished?
The students didn’t violate federal law.
And with a jammer in place they couldn’t have used their phones so they couldn’t have broken school rules.
The bottom line for me in this is simple. A teacher with some tech ability got lazy. Frustrated at not knowing how to get students attention he didn’t want to handle things by the rules or within the system so he jumped to overkill which violated the law. He should have been arrested.
He wasn’t just stoping use in his class or even the school, he was blocking a tower which can effect a rather large area and hundreds if not thousands of people. This is a large area to have no 911 available in the event of a car accident or medical emergency. People could have died because of his short sighted and illegal actions.