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"Researchers and educators agree that cellphones have become fixtures in Canadian classrooms, but opinion remains divided on how best to address their presence. All agree that the presence of smartphones can be problematic if students are allowed to devote more attention to their screens than their studies. One research paper suggests the majority of schools are still treating cellphones as a scourge and banning the devices outright both in and out of class. But that study and a growing number of boards say they've had more success once deciding to stop fighting the technological tide and find ways to incorporate cellphones into schools."

"New York City's public school district is gearing up to scrap a controversial policy forbidding its 1.1 million students from having cellphones on campus. The thing is, plenty of students are already ignoring the ban. It turns out some of the poorest kids in the city are the ones who will notice the change most. The decision to lift the ban was prompted by safety concerns. Mobile phones aren't just for snapchatting but a way for kids to let parents know where they are. And with teen cellphone ownership rates so high, an ongoing ban increasingly seemed impractical-if not impossible. Civil rights activists call the move inevitable and long overdue."

"When a U.S. psychology professor offered her students a bonus credit if they would silence and surrender their cellphones at the start of class, little did she know how rewarding the experiment would be. Sixty-one per cent of her students at Columbia State Community College in Tennessee "loved the activity," citing the improved environment for concentration, participation and even peacefulness when the phones went dumb. Of the 82 students, not a single one disliked the exercise."

"Cellphones in schools is a subject I've discussed at length before and one that doesn't seem to be going away any time soon. It's a bellweather issue, an issue that indicates clearly where you sit on the educational spectrum. Do schools teach students "the rules" or help students learn effectively?"

"Figment.com will be unveiled on Monday as an experiment in online literature, a free platform for young people to read and write fiction, both on their computers and on their cellphones. Users are invited to write novels, short stories and poems, collaborate with other writers and give and receive feedback on the work posted on the site. The idea for Figment emerged from a very 21st-century invention, the cellphone novel, which arrived in the United States around 2008. That December, Ms. Goodyear wrote a 6,000-word article for The New Yorker about young Japanese women who had been busy composing fiction on their mobile phones. In the article she declared it "the first literary genre to emerge from the cellular age." "

Forgotten in the American tumult is a global flowering of innovation on the simple cellphone. From Brazil to India to South Korea and even Afghanistan, people are seeking work via text message; borrowing and lending money and receiving salaries on cellphones; employing their phones variously as flashlights, televisions and radios.

"Going Mobile: Debating and Using Cellphones in School"

"Instead of teaching students the appropriate time to use a cellphone, the Prince George's school board would rather make students lock them up during the school day."

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