Attention Issues
Keeping a student’s attention in the classroom is always an
uphill battle. Teachers are performing a
song and dance every day 4-7 times a day for a high school teacher and if you
are lucky (or unlucky) enough to teach elementary school then all day long. You need to be able to challenge the smartest
of the smart and bring up the lowest of the low. It can just be flat out exhausting. Being able to develop an assignment or a
lesson that involves computers, cell phones, or tablets might just be that tool
that keeps your audience the best. The
question you need to ask yourself is does that hold the students attention the
entire time? Julie Tausend (2013 EdTech
Focus on Higher Education) thinks that it is the teachers call on how much
technology is used in the classroom. She
does say, “One downside of technology in the classroom is that it’s more
difficult to get students’ to turn away from their computers to participate in
the discussion.”
I teach in a school that is a 1-to-1 laptop tablet
program. I do not have a choice but to
welcome technology into the classroom. I
have found that at times allowing students to use their cellphones as well as
their laptop makes sense. I have also
been able to use it with less of a distraction as well. I have tried my very best to keep it just
academic and not anything else. EdwardGraham wrote in a NEA article that “There’s a simple way to ensure that students use devices for educational
purposes: change the classroom dynamic from lecturing at the front of the room to
having no traditional front of the classroom at all.” I understand that every teacher is different
but being able to walk around the classroom will keep kids honest regarding
their technology use.
No matter how you
look at it there are always going to be distractions. There is Snapchat, Instagram, Vine (even
though it went away), Tumblr, Pheed (new), Twitter, Facebook, Pandora, Spotify,
Google Music, Netflix and I am sure there are more than that. Matt Richel (2010, New York Times) wrote, “Several
recent studies show that young people tend to use home computers for
entertainment.” In my class, students do
not need a cell phone to be distracted.
They can be on one of a thousand apps that takes them away from their
work. They are encouraged to be on their
computer all day long. We as adults
cannot be on our laptops all day long without getting off task, so why can’t we
expect them to do the same?
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I have been
teaching computers for 7 years now. I
have taught in classrooms that the students were never on a computer unless
they were in my class and I know teach in a classroom that a computer is
expected. There are various ways to keep
students focused on their work. I personally
allow students to listen to music, in some schools I told them what website or
program they could use. I found that
this eliminates students from being distracted by other students.
How are you going
to create your technology rules?
What are you
going to do to keep the students focused on just their work?
