In Week 1 or 2 we had a conversation about the distractions of technology in the classroom, and James Lang, author of Small Teaching, has good insights on this subject. Check out these resources for more information.
“No, Banning Laptops Is Not the Answer” by James Lang at The Chronicle of Higher Education: “I view the presence of distracted students on laptops in the classroom just as I view cheating—as a problem that can help us take a closer look at our teaching and make better decisions about it.”
A sample technology in the classroom policy from one of Lang’s courses: “In this class we will spend the majority of our time engaged in activities that depend upon you being present and attentive to one another, and of course to the works of literature we will study. We are all challenged these days by the ways in which our digital devices—including laptops, tablets, and phones—can steal our attention away from our immediate surroundings. In this class we will have a technology policy that is designed to support your attention to one another and to the course material.”
Distracted with James Lang at Teaching in Higher Ed (a podcast): “One of the main ideas of the book is to try to convince people that attention is something that we should value in education and not take for granted.”
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Also, a lovely book on attention (in general, rather than wrt teaching) that I highly recommend is How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy by Jenny Odell.