think on this.

If there is one thing that the mobile-computing era has made clear, it’s that kids love touch screens. Because those touch screens — smartphones, iPads, Kindles and the like — are an inevitable added distraction to the classroom, schools across the country are struggling to deal with the growing prevalence of the technology. But a growing number of schools are embracing these hand-held, Internet-ready devices by creating policies that put them to use in the classroom. For three years, Oyster River Middle School in Durham, N.H., has been letting students use their touch-screen devices in class. The kids learn how to make presentations on iPads, how to keep track of their homework on a smartphone, and what they should and shouldn’t post on social media sites. The devices can be their planners, agenda books, and pocket reference libraries all day long. Oyster River’s bring-your-own-device policy is seen as a way to ensure that kids are using technology every day, as teachers assume they’ll do after they graduate high school.

Dave Montgomery, a fifth-grade teacher, says his daughter goes to another school that has no bring-your-own-device policy. At home, she uses her smartphone to look things up all the time, he says. “Then she walks into what’s supposed to be a learning environment, and she can’t use her No. 1 source of learning,” Montgomery says.