Students and their devices

“The practical effects of my decision to allow technology use in class grew worse over time,” writes Clay Shirky in explaining why he’s decided to ban laptops, smartphones, and tablets from the classes he teaches at NYU. “The level of distraction in my classes seemed to grow, even though it was the same professor and largely the same set of topics, taught to a group of students selected using roughly the same criteria every year. The change seemed to correlate more with the rising ubiquity an...