Jimbo Lamb blogs about a discussion he had on a listserv regarding the use of cell phones in the classroom. He mentions a situation that occurred in his classroom:

Two weeks ago, a situation arose where my students were tested. A student forget to silence her phone (we all make this mistake), and it went off in the middle of a lesson. She quietly and calmly silenced the phone, I kept teaching, and not a single student reacted in any other way to the "disruption." The lesson got through to them. Now, had I followed the rule to the letter of the law, I would have confiscated the phone on the spot. I would have had to stop the lesson to ask for the phone, possibly argue with the student that didn't want to part with her device, and then get the class back into the lesson. Which, I ask, is more disruptive?

I think Mr. Lamb asks a great question. What is more disruptive, banning cell phones and requiring teachers to confiscate them, or embracing student cell phones and teaching students how to use them more responsibly. For the 2009-2010 school year we changed our cell phone policy at the school were I serve as an assistant principal. We allow students to use their cell phones in between classes and in the cafeteria during their lunch period. The rest of the school day is instructional time and their cell phones are to be off and out of site unless a teacher is using them as part of the lesson. We tell the students the time between classes and lunchtime is "their time", the rest of the school day is the "teachers time". They know they are not to interfere with instruction. Additionally, we made another change to our cell phone policy. We no longer require teachers to confiscate a student's cell phone if they violate the policy. We tell the teachers to write up a conduct report and turn it in to the main office and we will handle it from there. Our goal was to eliminate the classroom struggle that ensues between the teacher and a student when there is a cell phone policy violation. So far I think the changes to our policy have been helpful in cutting down loss instructional time. Overall we have not had an increase in cell phone policy violations versus the same time last year when we did not allow cell phones to be used during the school day. In all honesty the students treated the change in the policy like it was no big deal. Many students have told me that by allowing them to use their phones it has removed the temptation to take them out at other times when it would be inappropriate.