Rule breaking!

So, I break rules. To anyone who knows me, that may come as no surprise. I don't do it all the time, only when I believe it to be a rule that inhibits what is in the best interest of others, or when its not officially written down (blue hair story).  Ok, so let me justify it before I tell you the rule I broke, or acutally I didn't break it, the students did at my request. So, I want the kids to take over more of their own learning. I want them to learn how to learn using the content of my class. I explained this to them when I was explaining changes to the way things were working in our school with grading and homework and classwork and all the things we have been dealing with as instructors. Anyway, if students aren't going to be going to me to get information, where should they go? Not a difficult question for any of us who grew in the digital age, we google it, or bing it or whatever. We get the information from the internet. There in lies the problem for me. See, I have what would be considered a lot of technology in my classroom for our school. I have 7 computers. Yep, I'm a computer hog. In fact, we science teachers like to hog the computers in our school. So, not a problem right, at least if you only have 7 students or maybe 14 at the most, but I have anywhere from 25 to 28 so that doesn't work too well for impatient middle school kids. So, I explained to the kids that in order for them to do what we need to do, they were going to have to break the rules. I said, " anyone with unlimited data could get their phones out and use them to began working on learning and exploring the I can statements." In the first couple of classes there were students who had both unlimited data and a wifi hotspot and they set up the hotspot for the students that didn't have unlimited data. OH YEAH, I forgot to mention that students and staff in our district are not allowed on the district wifi with personal devices, hence the need for the work around. The kids pulled out their phones (which of course were not in their pockets because we have a no cell phone policy at our school and they are supposed to be in their lockers and not in class) and got to work. I did inform them that we had to be responsible about the use of the phones and not text and stuff because if we got found out "the man will shut us down" and that we will lose the privilege to use them. Guess what? They actually learned stuff on their own. One student came up to me and said, "Hey Mr. Covey, the protons match the atomic number. Did you know that?" I was like "they do, is it like that for other ones or just the one you are looking at?" and I walked away while he went back to his work. Today, our second day on the job like this, I had a girl say, "come here Mr. Covey. We learned something on our own. The Atomic Mass is the same as the number of protons and neutrons added together." They were actually looking at the relative average mass so I asked them what they meant, and what the protons and neutrons were. So they went back to look that up. I walked by later and they snagged me to explain the structure of the atom and how the atomic mass related to the number of protons, neutrons, and electrons. So I asked them how the atom was related to the elements, and it just kept going.  Now, I could have waited until we had 1-1 technology to have the students learning like this or I could break the rules a little and have them doing it now with the technology sitting in their pockets. I think I'll break the rules thank you.