Sunny weather. Living in Ireland, the sun is ALWAYS a welcome respite from the constant dull rainy shite.

That's my exact experience too. My school already bans phones, but that hasn't stopped me staring out the window or just sitting there and thinking to myself. A phone would be an improvement as I'd at least have a chance of looking up something relevant to what the teacher's saying.

We don't have those kind of calculators in the schools here. I just do the old-fashioned "input random sums and see what the calculator says".

As a school student in a school where phones are banned, I think this is a bad idea. The ban achieves 2 things for me:

1. Making it harder to check a fact or figure quickly.

2. Preventing me from listening to music, playing games or browsing the web uring lunch break.

It DOES NOT stop me from becoming disengaged from the class! If I'm bored, I'll look out the window, play with a calculator or something similar. And of course the ban hasn't stopped many students using phones anyway. Maybe phone bans don't solve the issue of uninteresting classes after all?