As a parent of two young boys, exposure to technology has always been an issue.  Being an educator and learning how to mediate its use in the classroom has made the issue doubly important.  While I was a teacher at Pearson College, I was unable to successfully negotiate a reasonable classroom policy around laptops and cellphones, and it was certainly to the detriment of the learning experience.  Students were very much distracted by their phones, and were therefore unable to focus on their work as a result.  As I’ve been visiting various classrooms at Vic High, I’ve noticed a definite divide between teachers who use the “cell phone hotel” and those that don’t with regards to distraction in the classroom.  For those instructors who permit cellphones in the classroom, the teacher has to repeatedly remind students to take out their ear bugs, put the phones away, and focus on the work at hand; for the instructors who do require “cell phone jail” as Jessie Miller coins it, there is less distraction.  I am skeptical of the amount of anxiety that arises in students being away from their phones; and even if there is that amount of anxiety, it is something which needs be addressed rather than caved in to.  As educators, we are not only teachers, but we are also role models, and it is up to us to provide clear frameworks and boundaries for the use of technology.  This is doubly true as a parent, and I am finding it difficult to “do as I say” as well as “do as I do”.  That being said, the onus IS on me to be a good model around technology.  I do believe that mental health issues are a necessary consequence of being too invested in an online reality, and we must all work together to provide structure for students to create an identity grounded in physical reality outside of the false world of online identities.  As an instructor, I will work hard to live out those boundaries.