I’m quoted in this @NBCNews story. I’m a bit sad they didn’t use the sound bite where I said the practice of locking up student cell phones in magnetized cloth bags is “authoritarian” and “creepy.” But they did capture the gist of what I said. nbcnews.com/news/education…
Educators should be helping students become critical users of technology not locking up cell phones and policing distraction. Pencils are distracting. Doodling is distracting. Windows are distracting. Attention ebbs and flows, by its very nature.
Educators should also be learning from students about how and why they use technology. Many of the students I work with know far more than I do about how technology does or does not help their learning.
A student’s attention is not something a teacher can control. We can demand the performance of attention, but actual attention does its own thing. And there’s something wondrous about a wandering mind that keeps reeling itself back in. Wandering is what education should be for.
Making connection is indeed something we do in rooms, but the connections we make online are also real. Many marginalized students have to construct their own communities because they feel ostracized or isolated. Disconnecting people from their community is not good for learning.
What I’m particularly opposed to are blanket device bans that fail to recognize that different humans learn in different ways at different times. And I’m opposed to policies that start from a place of distrust and especially when they use elaborate props to signal that distrust.
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