Samuel G. Freedman, professor of journalism at Columbia University, recently posted a very entertaining and informative New York Times Online article that discusses the difficulty of policing classrooms full of students armed with arsenals of technological distracters. Freedman writes, “[Educators’] perpetual war of attrition with defiantly inattentive students has escalated from the quaint pursuits of pigtail-pulling, spitball-lobbing and notebook-doodling to a high-tech arsenal of laptops, cellphones, BlackBerries and the like.”

Prof. Michael Bugeja of Iowa State University suggests that the technological tension between professors and students can be attributed to a fundamental conceptual divergence. He writes, “The baby boomers seem to see technology as information and communication,” while ““their offspring and the emerging generation seem to see the same devices as entertainment and socializing.”

In the past three years alone, the percentage of college classrooms with wireless service has nearly doubled, to 60 percent from 31 percent, according to the Campus Computing Survey, an annual check by the Campus Computing Project of computer use at 600 colleges. Professor Bugeja’s online survey of several hundred Iowa State students found that a majority had used their cellphones, sent or read e-mail, and gone onto social-network sites during class time. A quarter of the respondents admitted they were taking Professor Bugeja’s survey while sitting in a different class.

In response to this pervasive classroom “multitasking,” Scott Carlin, an instructor of teacher interns at Michigan State University, advises his charges to forbid personal use of tech devices in the classroom. He states, “If the students actually found some creative way to use a cellphone or a BlackBerry in a class demonstration, I’d be all for that,” “Or if they could demonstrate how a chat room or AOL instant messenger would help them present a project. But what I found in most cases is that it was just a fancy new way of passing notes.”

Perhaps, Carlin’s acknowledgment of the possibility that these devices might be employed to contribute to teaching and learning provides some hope for the future. Ultimately, we are never going to be able to dam the technological flood. As Freedman suggests, “In the end, as science-fiction writers have prophesied for years, the technology is bound to outwit the fallible human.” However, if we can somehow turn-the-tables by regularly implementing these devices into our daily classroom routines, perhaps we can make some headway in the “war of attrition with defiantly inattentive students.”