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"When Texting Kills, Britain Offers Path to Prison "

"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."

"If you were to take a glance around a classroom in which no smartphone policy has been set, it would be easy to conclude that texting at school is nothing but a distraction. Just look at all of those bent heads and rapidly moving thumbs! Take a look at the caliber of those texts - "wat r u doing l8er" - and it would also be easy to assume texting will one day bring about the end of literacy and analytical thought, if it hasn't already. This may be true - and it may also not be. The studies in this area are even newer than texting itself, and results are mixed, with one study indicating that texting makes students worse in one academic area while another study finds the opposite. Let's take a closer look at the good and the bad of texting, as well as at a few ways you can harness the benefits for the good of your classroom."

"How should teachers - both K-12 and college - deal with the use of computers and phones by students in class? On the one hand, those sleek little supercomputers promise to connect us to all human knowledge. On the other hand, they are also scientifically designed by some of the world's top geniuses to feel as compelling as oxygen. So where does that leave teachers? Should you ban these devices in the classroom? Let students go whole hog? Or is there a happy medium? This seemingly simple topic ends up being what one professor and pedagogy expert calls "a Rorschach test for so much that's going on in education.""