People were tired of using the iPad textbook besides using it for reading," says Kalpit Shah, who will be going into his second year at Irvine's medical program this fall.

They weren't using it as a source of communication because they couldn't read or write in it.

So a third of the people in my program were using the iPad in class to take notes, the other third were using laptops and the last third were using paper and pencil.

Civilization,then,is fine — people banging away on their smartphones are fluently using a code separate from the one they use in actual writing, and there is no evidence that texting is ruining composition skills.

I would ban that too if I knew the students were using it in class.

Are you using your dictating machine this morning?