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The cellphone industry has been doing its homework and has come up with a fun and functional way to boost the math skills of American students exponentially. How? Spend more time on cellphones in the classroom.

At the recent Mobile Learning 09 conference in Washington, a wireless industry trade group presented research-sponsored by cellphone chip maker Qualcomm-that shows smartphones really do make students smarter. Critics pooh-pooh the effort as a ploy to break into the lucrative educational market. But proponents claim that they are simply making the same kind of pitch that the computer industry has been profitably making to schools since the 1980s.

The only difference between smartphones and laptops, they say, is that cellphones are smaller, cheaper, and more sought after by students. Many teenagers already have smartphones and use them regularly to access online stuff and share music and pictures with friends.

Digital Millennial Consulting, which conducted the research, has contacted school districts in Chicago, San Diego, and Florida about buying specially equipped phones for the classroom. It projects that wireless companies could sell 10 million to 15 million phones in the next few years as a result of this effort.

The Digital Millennial study found four North Carolina schools in low-income neighborhoods, where ninth- and 10th-grade math students were given high-end cellphones running Microsoft Windows Mobile software and programs designed to assist them with algebra studies. The students used the phones for a variety of tasks, including recording themselves solving problems and posting the videos to a private social networking site, where classmates could watch. The study found that students with the phones performed 25 percent better on the end-of-the-year algebra exam than did students without the devices in similar classes.

Students also received 900 minutes of talk time and 300 text messages a month to use in free time outside of class. Teachers monitored the messages and reprimanded any students whose activity violated the school's standards.

Some critics claim using such communications detracts from the overall time students spend on studies; several states and many school districts have banned cellphones from school premises completely. "Texting, ringing, vibrating," says a spokeswoman for the American Federation of Teachers, "cellphones so far haven't been an educational tool. They've been a distraction."

The cellphone industry, though, sees a lot of money on the table. Schools now spend hundreds of millions of dollars on computers. To provide an average of one computer for three students to share costs $1,000 a year per machine. But computers and their larger screens offer a range of teaching opportunities while enabling students to write papers and do research online.

Previous attempts to bring cellphones into schools have met with limited success. Recently, 2,500 New York City public school students got an exemption from the city's overall ban on cellphones and received a free Samsung flip-phone. They earned prepaid minutes for good behavior and high test scores, and teachers sent them text messages, reminding them of deadlines. But the project ran out of money.

The grade for this latest attempt to get cellphones into schools is marked with pluses and minuses. One teacher who administered the Digital Millennial program said the phones excited her students and inspired them to collaborate and focus on their studies, even outside of school hours. Average-level kids became honours-level kids.

But the program also ate into her time at night and on weekends and holidays to monitor and occasionally disconnect phones when students broke the rules.

"You have to be willing to put in the time," she said, "and be very patient with the technology."