Tangled in an endless web of distractions

While Inman took matters into her own hands, some MIT professors are urging college leaders across the country to free students from their tether to technology. Over the past decade, schools raced to connect students to the Internet — in dorms, classrooms, even under the old oak tree. But now, what once would have been considered heresy is an active point of discussion: pulling the virtual plug to encourage students to pay more attention in class and become more adept at real-life social networking.

“I have been a bit skeptical about the value of making an entire campus wireless,’’ said Lawrence Bacow, president of Tufts University and former chancellor of MIT, where he was a professor when it began wiring all classrooms in the mid-1990s. “It seems like everyone is always plugged in and always distracted.’’

At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology — home to the father of the World Wide Web and where the Internet is accessible even near the banks of the Charles River — students’ eyes obsessively wander, midconversation, down to laptops and cellphones, checking for missed updates from friends.

In class, professors complain about students trading stocks online, shopping for Hermès scarves, showing one another video clips on YouTube — leading some faculty to call for the unwiring of all lecture halls.

“Students are totally shameless about how they use their computers in class,’’ said David Jones, an MIT professor. “I fantasize about having a Wi-Fi jammer in my lecture halls to block access to distractions.’’

While MIT has yet to unwire a single lecture hall, some law schools, including the University of Chicago’s, have in recent years blocked wireless access in classrooms to keep students engaged in Socratic discussions instead of their classmates’ Groupon and eBay activities.