Paying Attention in the Classroom
Alan
Jacobs banned laptops (and other internet-enabled devices) from his class. His
reason was that his students were getting distracted. My instinctive reaction
was to disagree with him: shouldn't he accept the reality of the ubiquitous
connected device and adapt his teaching to align with them? Who refers to a
book after college anyway (except for ultra-specialized topics)? Don't we just
dip into the perfect recall of Google?
Then
recently, at work, I found it better to learn a new field (pneumatics and
mechanical engineering) by taking notes on a book than on my laptop. The laptop
was distracting me with every new mail and message. Clay Shirky sums it up perfectly:
“Multi-tasking is cognitively exhausting.”
On the
other hand, aren't many teachers bad at teaching? Did any of us ever learn
anything from those teachers even in the pre-connected-device-in-every-pocket
era? But Shirky brings out a point I hadn't realized (even though it was right
under my nose), namely that the Internet, especially social media, is designed
to be attention grabbing and thus distractive:
“Both the form and the content of a Facebook update are almost
irresistibly distracting, especially compared with the hard slog of
coursework.”
Shirky
adds that even the OS's of the Internet era devices (iOS and Android) are
designed to distract!
“Worse, the designers of operating systems have every incentive to
be arms dealers to the social media firms. Beeps and pings and pop-ups and
icons, contemporary interfaces provide an extraordinary array of
attention-getting devices, emphasis on “getting.””
And
so, Shirky sums up this deadly combination thus:
“The form and content of a Facebook update may be almost
irresistible, but when combined with a visual alert in your immediate
peripheral vision, it is—really, actually, biologically—impossible to resist.”
Even
worse, Shirky goes so far as to say that even the best teacher can't hold the
students' attention against the devices:
“The (IT + social media + devices) industry has committed itself
to an arms race for my students’ attention, and if it’s me against Facebook and
Apple, I lose.”
Further,
says Nick Carr,
it is not true that someone quietly checking Facebook and mails in the
classroom doesn't affect others:
“Our attention is governed not just by our will but by our
environment. That’s how we’re built.”
Maybe
Jacobs was right after all. But he never could convince me with his arguments.
Whereas Shirky and Carr did.
I am not clear why find Jacobs unconvincing. His method may not be the best, but as to distraction due to devices (any communication device) how can it not be?
ReplyDeleteActually, we seem to have reached a stage when the highly distracting communication devices have taken charge of people's minds. People have got into accidents and some of them got killed too, thanks to the irresistible mobile phone talk. One book confirmed that though we believe that we can watch the road and do mobile talk too, human mind's native program has the ability to blank out inputs selectively and completely. Anyone who is absorbed in mobile talk is already doing partial blind driving. And never aware of it.
There are still some people who do not allow the mobile to make them impolite or uncaring in the middle of company/conversation. At the same time, I find that any number of people no longer care about other person, the moment the mobile rings. In today's world even a lip service apology is deemed irrelevant. It is perfectly normal to prioritize the mobile. I forever respect those who care for the people in their front.
As usual, we end up with the same thing! Anything in this world has pros and cons. And everything is a mixed package only - no exceptions. How will any of our judgements help?