I’ve done and felt the same way when accidentally leaving my phone at home. I’m realistic. I’m not the most important person in the room, and the likelihood of me absolutely needing my phone every minute of the day is hovering around zero. Does this mean I want to leave it home everyday? Of course not, but it does put in perspective how easily the learning process can be damaged by distractions. I’ve tried to take steps at home to take me away from the temptation of watching tv, or surfing the internet, or mindlessly playing a game on my phone. Class can be a different story. Like you mention in your post, many instructors incorporate technology into the classroom routinely. This creates a strange balance between learning and distraction that we all will have to come to grips with.

LikeLike

Good ideas. But what about the computer itself as a distraction? How can you do serious literature review without wifi, and while you’re surfing pubs, how can you stop from clicking over to something more interesting.

I also wish Carr had provided some remedy. While sadly, he did not, reading through his article really made me put things into perspective. I dare not download an app like Quality Time because it will quantitatively reinforce what I already know: I spend too much time using technology in an unproductive way. I’ve tried to make solutions on my own to help me fight the lure of the technological blackhole. I have my work space in a back corner of the house, out of sight and earshot of the television, in a place where the Wi-Fi is spotty at best, and I leave me phone by the coffee pot as a means of self-monitoring my time wasting. This is the best solution I’ve come up with.

I’m TA’ing in a class now where the instructor also requires the students to put their laptops away. The instructor explained that her rationale is that laptops can be a distraction and interfere with the ability of others to focus. I originally thought there would be some push back from the students, but I see them engage in the class regularly. This class has 50+ students, and while a lot of the class discussion is guided by the same 10 or so students, nearly all the students have engaged in discussions or raised their hands to share thoughts. In a class this size, if laptops were out, I’d bet there would be much less interaction.

Regarding Zhanyu’s post, this is a difficult problem. It becomes even more problematic when we need computers to do the work. One of the courses I hope to teach has a major lab component that is entirely computerized, forget laptops, everyone gets a workstation.

At that point, how do you stop a student from pulling up Chrome or Firefox and multitasking between that and the program we are running? I guess you could use a firewall to disable access to social media, but that seems overly intrusive, and goes against Paulo Freire’s ideals. You can’t treat students like 12-year-olds who are not allowed to use the internet without parental supervision. This infantilizes and dehumanizes them. I know I’d personally be offended if the computer lab I was supposed to use had nanny software on it. But what if, as Zhanyu suggested, they are distracting the others!?! I know I’ve been in labs where some guy in a row ahead of me was watching live ESPN streams; I was barely able to concentrate on my own work (especially if VT was playing, you’d be surprised how many VT basketball games are scheduled during class hours). I suppose in such situations the professor must act, but otherwise, as Nicole said, we cannot deny them the freedom of choice. Even if they choose to be foolish (though hopefully personal responsibility wins out).

Shout out to Nicole for excellent graphics.

Teaching others about what we do is absolutely imperative for sure. Education extends beyond primary and secondary school and beyond higher education. We must learn from others in our day-to-day lives as well, and to do this, we must talk to others and discuss what they do, what they know, etc.

I am in the same boat. It is literally an addiction. I can’t not hit social media or the internet. Even at dinner with my wife it is hard to keep the phone away. In a class or boring departmental seminar, forget about it.

I downloaded an app called Quality Time which measures the time I spend on my phone and it clocks me in at over 4 hours a day. That’s nearly 30 hours a week – imagine how much more productive I could be if I put that into my studies (I am also coming up on prelims, good luck to us both). I bet I spent half of my time in any given class on social media or googling random nonsense.

I wish Carr had a better answer to this problem… it negatively impacts every part of my life, not just the classroom experience.

(Excellent pic for internet guide BTW).

I really like that idea about having students using laptops sit up front. Maybe from now on, I’ll tell them that my preference is against device use, but if they choose to — for any reason, and they don’t have to say why — just to sit closer to me. Thanks for that. Also, interesting thoughts re: web access. I didn’t know that there were places in this state without it. Lack of access definitely changes the conversation on Internet overload a bit!

Doesn’t a description of the past and goals for the future, along with a good dose of the present tell a story of the personal development of the scholar? Probably very few of us grew up and entered the academic and working world with a well developed understanding of social, political and economic factors that contributed to diversity, equality and inclusion? Even if we did, no one is perfect and will still have improvements to make. I think that being aware of where you came from and how far you have to get where you’re going is important and a part of being mindful and in the present. Otherwise the present has no context.

I don’t feel like I have very much to contribute to increasing diversity and inclusion around me, except to say that I’m aware of it now and I’m thinking and learning. Because I am somewhat limited in the choices I can make right now in my teaching or research, for example, I would not have very much that I am doing right now to talk about, so I might focus more on what I will do.

Where do we find the balance, between past, future and present?

LikeLike

Well said. I remember memorizing landline numbers, must have had nearly 20 of them committed. At some point it became muscle memory; the buttons of my mom’s old touch-tone phone had wonderful tactile response. Today the only number I really remember is my wife’s and only because I have to put her number into online forms when ordering stuff for her. :p
I like your external versus internal memory argument. It sounds like science fiction, but I think we’ll eventually achieve the vision that Google’s founders had. Direct brain access to all the data on the web. At that point, what purpose is there to memorize anything? Why bother learning simple math either, when you can presumably have similar access to Wolfram Alpha… At some point humans will be totally helpless without this technology, and the people who bother to learn such things will be seen in the same light as modern day survivalists who take classes on how to survive in the wilderness with primitive technology.
I guess there is no point in worrying as we literally cannot stop this. One of the readings was talking about the fear that the Gutenberg press would destroy the mental discipline of scholars, but it didn’t matter because the press was so incredibly valuable, it couldn’t be ignored. Same goes for external silicon memory – it is so powerful, that the people who eschew it cannot compete. We really have no choice. Resistance is futile…