Two colleges pioneer in preventing students from accessing Internet during class

BOSTON -- Two colleges on the cutting edge of Internet technology are now pioneering solutions to a rapidly growing problem: students who pay more attention to their computers than to their professors.

Bentley and Babson colleges were among the first in the nation to wire their classrooms for the Internet. And now they're spending tens of thousands of dollars on software and hardware that lets professors block some Internet access in classrooms with network connections.

"Faculty members were finding students surfing the Net, sending instant messages, even looking at porn in some of the freshman intro classes," said Phillip Knutel, Bentley's director of academic technology.

As another deterrent, some classrooms at Bentley have technology that allows teachers to capture a student's e-mails or instant messages and display them on a large screen for the whole class to see.

The software doesn't censor which sites a student can visit on the Internet.