Smart Devices

Winners of Apple’s Swift Student Challenge will attend the company’s Worldwide Developers Conference in June, showing off app concepts they built using an Apple-developed coding language.

Now that Florida state law has given school districts the green light to restrict cellphone use in classrooms, school boards across the Tampa Bay area are deciding how to approach the issue.

Keegan Lee was in ninth grade when she realized her addiction to social media apps had become "all-consuming." She has spent much of the past several years writing and raising awareness about social media addiction.

Separating kids from smartphones is a challenge, with polling showing more than 95 percent of teens have access to the devices and 54 percent say it'd be at least somewhat hard to give up social media.

The Conneaut Area City Schools Board of Education voted to buy new Chromebooks and improve the sound systems at a middle school and high school. Five to 12 laptops each day, out of 1,600 total, need repairs.

A divided state House on Tuesday passed a bill that would have Pennsylvania do something all its nearby neighbors have done — ban the use of handheld cell phones by drivers.

The redesigned platform — believed to be the first of its kind at launch — enhances how residents, businesses and governments can access and view statewide land ownership data. Mobile performance and print functions are also improved.

Amid a growing body of research and lawsuits related to the subject, social media addiction was the focus of a presentation at the National School Boards Association conference this week, featuring a student with firsthand experience.

Officials at Quincy School District in Washington say phones have changed the dynamics of bullying by extending it beyond school hours, and most bullying incidents start on social media.

Data and anecdotes alike have shown excessive use of smartphones and social media are negatively impacting students' social-emotional skills. Many school districts are implementing programs to counter this.

Clinical psychologist Lisa Strohman connects technology overuse with rampant mental health problems in young people, and she says they will need help from parents, teachers and administrators to deal with this.

Some students feel unfairly restricted by Fresno Unified School District's use of an app to regulate their trips outside classrooms during instructional periods. They are allowed two seven-minute bathroom breaks per day.

The lawsuit, filed Thursday, accuses Apple of stifling competition and leveraging its clout and ownership of the popular App Store to increase prices for customers.

A handful of schools in the Norwalk area will join three other regional schools currently enrolled in the Verizon Innovative Learning program, which will provide free Chromebooks and data plans to students and staff.

As many schools have already banned cellphone use during class, governors and legislators in at least half a dozen states are pushing their schools to follow suit — through persuasion or by law.

At a recent roundtable discussion with Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, school administrators said students appear to be more engaged, more social and mentally healthier since being separated from their smartphones during the day.

Carroll County teachers have shared frustrations about cellphones being a disruption to instruction as well as a mode of bullying, and trying to enforce the district's current limited-use policy uses up class time.

Since December, students at Illing Middle School have had to place their phones into magnetically locked pouches during the day. Feedback from teachers and parents has been positive, and students got used to it.