As far as looking at students who look at their phones or tablets in class, I welcome it. So in teaching programming, I teach how to create an app on a mobile device like a phone or tablet. If students have phones, and it;s now part of their arsenal of technology, I incorporate it into the lesson. If you don't teach programming, there are many apps already created so you can have the students use the phones to enhance their education rather than as a distraction. Telling a student not to bring or use their mobile computing devices is like telling a math student not to bring in their calculators. Infact, there are better versinos of engineering and graphing calculator apps than the actual calculators themselves. Phones have faster processors and calcuations through a virtual app still run circles around the hardware utlized in most calculators. Don't look at edcuation as the old "Cells and Bells" ( an architectual term for designing schools) structure.
