PALO ALTO, California (AP) -- In the heart of Silicon Valley, Palo Alto High School junior Anna Luskin
freely uses her cell phone in between classes. Senior Sean Slattery taps notes
into his personal digital assistant as his teachers give lectures.
And
like many other students, senior Stav Raz has memorized her cell phone keypad
so she doesn't even have to look at it while quietly messaging friends during
class.
For
better or worse, handheld devices and laptops are now seen as essential
back-to-school supplies for students across America. And many schools have only
begun to weigh their educational benefits against their potential for text
messaging, photo swapping, cheating and chatting.
Nearly
a third of American teenagers now carry cell phones. An estimated 7 percent of
school districts even provide some students with handheld computers -- known as
PDAs -- thanks in many cases to corporate grants, according to the U.S.
Department of Education.
Students
who bring their own PDAs to school today mostly use them as organizers and
notepads. But many newer models have wireless Internet access, making it ever
more difficult for teachers to detect students exchanging gossipy notes or test
answers.
If
schools haven't addressed the PDA issue yet, "it's something they'll have
to wrestle with in the next couple of years as students bring more of these
kind of gadgets to schools," said John Bailey, director of education technology
for the Department of Education.
Handheld
devices remain verboten in most classrooms, but that doesn't mean students
aren't quietly tapping away under their desks.
Palo
Alto High is ahead of the curve and an exception. Its school board updated its
computer policies in June to include PDAs, basically allowing their use as long
as they don't interfere with class.
"They're
common-sense restrictions," said Chuck Merritt, Palo Alto High's assistant
vice principal.
When
Slattery, the Palo Alto senior, first got his PDA a year ago, teachers told him
to put it away whenever they caught him playing games on it. Now, he says he
uses it only for taking notes and keeping track of assignments.
He
knows he is lucky, because most other schools in the high-tech region and
elsewhere aren't so lenient.
"It's
not that we discourage technology here, but we want the kids to not be
distracted either," said Alice Pearson, an English teacher at East Dubuque
High School in Illinois. Pearson uses a Palm PDA herself to stay organized.
About
10 percent of the 600 East Dubuque students carry PDAs, said Joe Ambrosia, the
district's technology coordinator.
Though
no formal policy exists, teachers there generally apply the same rules that
they have for computers: no exchange of information between devices, and no
personal e-mail or chatting unless it's part of a class exercise.
When
East Dubuque does consider a PDA policy, Ambrosia said he'll want to ban the
combination cell phone-PDA models.
"It
shouldn't be so easy to have all these other functions at their
fingertips," he said. "It's hard enough to keep a young teenager on
task."
California
and Illinois are among only a handful of states that have lifted campus bans of
cell phones and pagers, which date back to the 1980s when the devices were
considered the tools of drug dealers, not of soccer moms and their kids.
A
few states now let school districts set their own cell phone policies. Some
have decided to keep bans in place; others restrict usage to before or after
school.
Schools
are adapting in other ways, too.
Some
teachers configure student seats in a U-shape instead of rows, for easier
monitoring of computer screens. They set rules on when laptop screens can be up
or down. They listen for keyboard taps, knowing that if students are typing a
mile a minute during a lecture, they're probably messaging someone instead of
listening.
And
cell phones that ring in class are often confiscated until school's over.
Schools
also have strict rules for when students can use their powerful graphing
calculators, which are often required for advanced math classes and achievement
tests. Newer graphing calculators have better memory, creating more
possibilities for cheating.
In
addition, vendors of educational software have responded to the cheating
potential -- for instance, the Scantron Corp. makes quiz programs for PDAs that
automatically disable the device's infrared beaming function.
Still,
policing the use of these devices "is a new skill in terms of teachers
knowing what to do," said Cari Vaeth, principal of Independence High
School in San Jose, which issued laptops last year to the entire class of 1,000
sophomores.
Social
studies classes at Independence High are also switching to e-books instead of
regular textbooks.
Even
so, despite some parental protests, cell phones and mobile communicators remain
banned from campus.
"Cell
phones are a huge distraction, so we've continued to stay with the ban,"
Vaeth said. "And in an emergency, we could get the student from the
classroom just like we always have."
