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?
Thank you, Mr. Brady for your blog post. I agree that teaching in the current classrooms can be difficult for all especially when it comes to keeping a students attention. Larger classrooms are often difficult to transition from one aspect of the lesson to another and self-contained classrooms have their own battles.
ReplyDeleteIn regards to technology in the classroom my high school does have one-on-one devices...for every child but self-contained students. This makes i difficult to utilize the devices in my classroom since I only have a few working ones. When I do include technology I often run into the issue of the students not being able to access a specific website or other technology issues.
The techology rules in my classroom are direct and to the point. You will login in to only the specified website. If you are caught on another website it is a referral to the Dean of Discipline. Great name, huh?? Keeping my students focused on their work is also inligned with the technology rules. I have access to Lan School which allows me to see on my computer what each student is doing on their desktops or devices. I also have the ability to shut them down and out if it is neccessary.
Technology can be so beneficial in the classroom if it is accessed appropriately. Sometimes being appropriate is the problem.
As a student preparing to become a teacher, I find it very useful to have a current teacher's perspective on attention/technology in the classroom. While I agree that using technology can create dynamic lessons that hold students' attention, I have found in my practicum classroom that having it always available makes it very difficult to keep the students from wandering. My practicum classroom is also a 1 to 1 computer classroom and even when we explicitly tell the students to put away their laptops when we aren't using them, they will still have them out. And then when we do have a lesson that requires laptop use, the students will stray on to youtube and other sites unrelated to the lesson.
ReplyDeleteI sometimes feel like it would be better to completely do away with technology, or at least have it contained to a computer lab. That way, if a teacher had a lesson that required technology, he or she could move the class to the computer lab for that lesson and remove the distraction from the day to day classroom.
All that being said, the phones still pose a similar difficulty. I've seen my practicum mentor teacher have a "no phones" rule, but lax enforcement. I plan to enact a similar rule in my future classroom, but I wonder if I will be any more successful with enforcement than she is. The draw is just too strong.
Steve I'm glad you asked how do we need to create technology rules, what has one been a triviality when technology was limited to game boys and calculator games is not a serious issue for educators in the classroom.
ReplyDeleteEven educational technology has the capacity to become distracting, if a student is using an "educational app" or with laptops in schools, able to work on another class and ignore what is right in front of them.
As for myself, I will feel strongly to impose a no phone policy in my classroom, unfortunately I do feel this will do little in some cases. My current practicum class is completely laptop based, meaning students can essentially do whatever they would do with their phones on their laptops.
The future is bleak in this regard to keeping students on task.
Deidra I think you have one of the most powerful tools that a technology teacher needs and that is the ability to see screens from yours. I found that being able to use that effectively allows the teacher to have a solid classroom management plan. Icarus you will find that as you continue to use technology in the classroom it will get easier and easier to control the classroom and keep them on track. Part of the reason that I allow music in the classroom is because I know I like to work with music and if they are working with headphones on then they aren't talking to anyone else. I have set up 3 strict rules to listening to music that help as well. #1 Don't sing, #2 Don't dance, and #3 Don't talk about it (its not your song, your boy, your girl, your jam, etc.) Also when I am talking they are not allowed to have headphones in. Jack, if you see what I wrote above that might help as well. I think that making it a 0 tolerance policy in the class would be a hard thing to keep up (at least for me) and by giving a little it also allows you to be able to take away at the same time.
ReplyDelete