10th graders give up electronics for an entire week

Detox hasn't been easy for these BlackBerry babies. They were born into a digital world of wireless links, with headphones where their ears should have been. Meyer, trying to teach them something about true connectedness and solitary reflection, asked them to go cold turkey and take notes. With pen and paper.

Meyer, who might have had ulterior motives all along, said she found that the quality of her students' homework vastly improved. No one suffered any illusions about what would happen when the deadline passed at midnight Tuesday.