When I hear about instructors who ban technology from the classroom, it is refreshing to hear why they are looking at their smartphone or tablet and thisnk how we could capture that attention…
“I get it,” the professor for my short-story course said, going over the syllabus on the first day of class. She was referring to her cellphone policy, which is basically a have-some-sort-of-decorum-I-beg-you rule. She asks us to be polite and use our good judgement.
“This is second nature to you guys,” she said, holding an invisible phone in her hand. “When I was in college, I would daydream about that guy I’d been seeing,” picture him, “and I’d tune out the lecture to wonder if he’d be at coffeehouse after class or not. You have Candy Crush.”
In high school, teachers used their sternest voices to give the “Put it away” command, confiscating smartphone after smartphone from students who did not—could not—abide by a cellphone ban. Everything a student is exposed to must go through a filter of distraction, the material taking a precarious path toward retention past Instagram and 2048.
My short-story professor realized this and perhaps thought, If my students can’t control themselves, what hope do I have?
I’m typing this article on my Macbook Pro, which is essentially a large flip iPhone. Under the Pages window is a syllabus, along with four other syllabi in their own windows. Under those: Spotify, a music player, Messages, a texting extension for iMessage, and Google Chrome, with no fewer than eight tabs up—some scholarly, some asinine. I eke out a sentence or two before I have to scroll through Facebook, change the song that’s playing, and reply to a few texts. It’s a compulsion. It does slow things down.
I guess I could close everything else, stopping Nick Cave’s voice mid-lyric, ignoring the “sup” text I just received, and abandoning the mindless scroll therapy, the thought-numbing act of skimming Facebook or Tumblr that I use to get through my work. But why?
Some would look upon my writing ritual with scorn and pity, perhaps remembering a time when typing was done on a typewriter, messages sent via telegraph, and distractions fewer. But that golden age is an illusion.
Read the rest at: http://chronicle.com/blogs/conversation/2014/09/23/dont-ban-laptops-in-the-classroom/?cid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en
