Those distractions have led to a mini-war on laptops in the classroom. On his home page, Mullen cited distracted students using their laptops for reasons other than taking notes as the cause for his demonstration. Afterward, he said, their attention in class improved. But then, whose wouldn’t? Although Mullen never claimed that he would take students’ laptops and destroy them if they were caught goofing off, the implication was clear: He had no tolerance for students surfing the Web or playing games in class, and he knew that’s what they were doing.

At the University of Colorado at Boulder, professor Diane Sieber also knew her students weren’t all paying attention in class. She carried out a very unscientific study simply by comparing the grades of students who used laptops in class with those of the students who didn’t. According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, Sieber privately informed the students after their first exam that they scored 11 percent lower than their counterparts without laptops.

Read the full story at Washington Post.