Like many of his colleagues, Ali Nazemi tells his students that they’d better turn their cellphones off before they come to class. But Mr. Nazemi, a professor of business administration and economics at Roanoke College, has gone to unusual lengths to drive home that message. When a student’s phone rang during a recent lecture, the professor confiscated it and proceeded to demolish with a hammer.
The incident was staged—Mr. Nazemi had arranged it with the student before class—but it had plenty of shock value. And that was precisely the point: As Samuel G. Freedman notes in The New York Times, plenty of professors are considering drastic measures to keep students from spending lecture-hall time fiddling with cellphones, iPods, and laptops.
One such tactic seems particularly interesting. A Canadian company called Smart Technologies has developed a program, called SynchronEyes, which lets professors monitor their students’ computers and freeze any machines that are not being used for note-taking. The software might be effective, but how many professors are willing to play the role of police in their own classrooms? —Brock Read
