Digital watches
Assemblies were constantly ruined by interruption from digital watch alarms. The facilitator would lose his "flow", and if we had a guest speaker - illustrating for example the nativity story through the use of fuzzy felts - the shame on the school was too much to bear.

As an attempt to counter this, the headteacher introduced the following process:
At the start of assembly, anyone with a digital watch would get in a line to have their watch inspected by Mr Bridge. Mr Bridge taught computers, and understood modern technology. He would briefly examine the watch, stab randomly at its buttons, and then nod solemnly to the headteacher, confirming that any alarm had been deactivated.
Once this had taken place for every individual watch-owner, the assembly would commence and, without fail, at the turn of the hour a hundred alarms would go off at different pitches for about 5 minutes, while Mr Bridge stared shame-faced at his feet, and the headteacher slowly shook his head in disappointment.

Eventually, all wrist watches were sealed in a sound-proof tupperware box for the duration of assembly, following the day someone smuggled in a Casio SK-1 keyboard and, during the 9am cacophony, triggered a chipmunk-fast sample of "MrBridgeIsASlut".

edit: "keyboard" added for non-geeks/young people
( browser still relating boring anecdotes into a void on, Thu 20 Jun 2013, 13:00, 2 replies)

so mine was not the only school this happened at.
the decline of 'proper watches' with 'hands' was much discussed.
(magictorch, Thu 20 Jun 2013, 13:06, closed)

SK-1? Wasn't that a keyboard?
Impressive smuggling none the less.

You also get a click for reminding me of our own watch antics, our assembly hall had windows down the one side, which unfortunately the sun shone into the audience during assembly time.

Which meant all of a sudden there were tens of glowing reflections on the ceiling, and, if you had balls, in the speakers eyes.
( Slippery Mick ‏, Thu 20 Jun 2013, 13:08, closed)

It was a very small keyboard
used either as a weapon, or to play samples in different pitches, calling people sluts.
( browser still relating boring anecdotes into a void on, Thu 20 Jun 2013, 13:09, closed)