Friend or Frustration?

A friend, Sarah, sent me a New York Times article entitled New Class(room) War: Teacher vs. Technology about how a greater and greater number of teachers (mostly high school and college) are seeing phones, computers and other technology as distractions without educational component. Of course, I can see their point. If I am sitting in a meeting with a computer, I am more likely to become distracted than if I did not have one. It's a draw, a lure away from the events transpiring in front of me.

The only time that does not apply is when the discussion or lesson is so very thrilling that I simply must watch and listen. So, as a teacher, does that mean that every one of my lessons has to be so very thrilling that a student cannot not listen? Must I, as Neil Postman puts it, amuse them to death?--my death, that is, since I would kill myself just trying to make every single lesson amazingly entertaining. And isn't that doing our children a disservice, because when, in the real work world, are they going to be entertained in meetings? It's the most I can do not to walk out when my time is being wasted.