Gannett's Ryan Holeywell looks at the benefits and challenges of Wi-Fi Internet access in the classroom. More than 40 percent of classrooms at colleges and universities had wireless access in the fall of 2005, up from 35.5 percent in 2004.

"Research suggests that professors who are wary of the technology might have good reason," Holeywell writes. "The more time students spend online in class, the worse their grades are, said Geri Gay, a professor of communication and information science at Cornell University who researches how students use the Internet."

Still, University of Oregon physics professor Gregory Bothun says Wi-Fi in the classroom gives him "another channel to get input from the students and for me to give them material. This technology allows you to push content to the students. The students then work with the content, massage it and send it back to you."

Bothun says blocking Wi-Fi in the classroom would be like "telling students that to take a class, you have to walk into the last century."