Schools & wired students

Schools are in quite the quandary these days, where kid tech's concerned. "As classes resume this month, schools across Texas are struggling to create and enforce technology policies that keep pace with today's children - a generation dependent on cellphones, text messaging and digital music players," the Houston Chronicle reports, and Texas educators are not alone. Some schools ban cellphones and MP3 players outright, others require them to be turned off during school hours, but - since the 1999 Columbine High School shootings and then the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York - schools have needed to strike a balance between potential class disruption and parents' wanting their kids "to have access to cell phones in emergencies," according to the Chronicle. In other school-tech news, the York (Pa.) Daily Record reports on tech as a "cheating tool"; CNET on "classroom clickers," "handheld gadgets, which look and work a lot like TV remote controls, [for responding] to classroom polls and quizzes without ever raising their hands or voices" (helpful to shy students); CNET also reports on how three UK secondary schools are testing the value of computer games in learning; and, on the remedial side, the Washington Post says online tutoring has gone mainstream, with "millions of students logging on to get assistance with reading, writing and arithmetic."