Comment on "Distractions in the Wireless Classroom"

I am lucky that only a few students can afford laptops and wireless system is not available in any classroom in our university. So I don’t have to warn my students to shut off their laptops. However, the continuous sound of IM is really a headache for me. To be frank, I can not control IM and there is no rule for me to follow when students check and send IM in class. The only way I can do is to try my best to attract their attention to my lectures.
But when I am on the supervisor duty to help students to study online course in the computer lab, I do come across all the problems mentioned in the article. It seems to be a habit to surf on the internet with QQ for Chinese students. We try to stop them when we find they are chatting on QQ, but completely failed. Even the top students always challenge teachers’ attention to find a single chance to chat with their friends about some trivial on QQ. The final solution is that we cut off the internet signal and only provide our students with intranet information when studying online English course in the computer lab. I agree that appropriate use of IT should be a very important lesson for our students in the future. To quote an old saying, students should be the master of technology rather than the slave of it. To adapt to IT does not necessarily mean that we have to do everything the technology facilitates. We should be selective in terms of what IT should be utilized, how to make them to facilitate our learning and teaching and when to make use of them.