Phone Pouch
A phone pouch is a lockable fabric pouch that holds a student's phone during the school day and is opened with a magnetic unlocking base, used to physically prevent phone access on a phone-free campus.
Also called magnetic pouch, Yondr pouch, lockable pouch
Phone pouches are a hardware approach to going phone-free. Students seal their phone in the pouch at the start of the day and unlock it at dismissal using a magnetic station, usually placed at exits.
Pouches are consumables: a share are lost or damaged each year and must be re-purchased, and staff spend time distributing, collecting, and unlocking them. These recurring costs are the main reason schools compare pouches against software.
Related terms
OS-Level Phone Locking
OS-level phone locking restricts a phone's apps and functions at the operating-system layer of the device itself, rather than inside a single app the student controls.
Phone-Free School
A phone-free school is a campus where students cannot use personal cell phones during the school day, enforced through policy and a storage or locking method rather than relying on teacher-by-teacher discretion.
Five-Year Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)
Five-year total cost of ownership is the full modeled cost of a phone-free program over five years — including hardware, annual replacements, and staff labor — used to compare phone pouches against software on equal footing.