E.T Phone Home...in class?

I just got done reading Wired's How the iPhone Could Reboot Education by Brian X. Chen. Apparently, at a private school in Texas they are handing out free iPhones or iPod Touches to incoming students. The school, I'm guessing, put in a lot of money for developers to create apps and programming just for its students to use this technology.

There is an app they created that allows students to anonymously answer quiz questions. Basically, they are using iPhone/iTouch technology in the same way many schools use PRS systems. This allows those quiet students who don't like speaking up in class to still be involved and allows the teacher to gauge when students are struggling via informal assessment.

Obviously, this article wants to spin the story positively to make it sound like all this fabulous technology in the classroom is amazing. But, I start to wonder if something like this would be as big a hit in high schools. By college, as in the case of the article, students are more focused because they want to be in school - they chose to go to college. College students (usually) take their studying a bit more serious than a high school freshmen that prefers to see school as a social activity, not a learning environment. During my observation hours in various schools and while coaching, I see students' cell phones as an extension of their hands. Texting and the occasional, very rare, phone call are done between multiple other tasks. This brings up my point: are teachers, who didn't grow up with a keyboard in their hands out of the womb, able to incorporate technology like the iPhone into their classrooms successfully? And, will students be able to incorporate the technology into their learning without abusing the power? Maybe they can get a clue from Spiderman, "With great power comes great responsibility."

Additionally, a professor asked students in the past, "Why aren't you taking notes?" The students told him that they could find that information on Wikipedia or another website and taking notes was tedious and unneeded. I agree with this. Being a student myself, I am rarely taking notes because I can just reference the text chapter, the PowerPoint on Blackboard, or Google a whole mess of information. At this point, the students in school now are used to this type of learning because they've grown up with it. To an aging professor, it seems taboo not to be taking notes. I say the behind-the-technological-times teachers meet the technologically advanced students halfway.