Robert M. Schwartz
Students go beyond simply wasting their time. Teachers from the elementary grades to university undergraduate programs have experienced students not only distracted on their devices, but also often distracting others through texting, sharing videos, etc., in a modern trend indicating disruption is becoming more advanced and prevalent. Since the advent of American education, the teacher – in the role of classroom manager – has worked to steward a classroom environment conducive to concentration and the dissemination and synthesis of useful information. Strong classroom management is the hallmark of any great K – 12 classroom. Figuring out a way to manage behaviors effectively is absolutely necessary before any real instruction and learning can take place. It used to be that talking, lack of focus, passing notes, and even staring out the window were the most common of a teacher's concerns.
Now, we see an ironic juxtaposition – the more and more easily information is available to students, the more it becomes a distraction from their picking up useful information. Facebook is only the beginning; Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat only the foundational bases. The most modern trend involves the links available on these most popular social networking sites. Students not only learn of the goings-on in the lives of their friends through the social "news feed," but they also see consistent posts for links to other Web sites. These sites provide "articles" and videos, some with the distinct purpose of providing distracting entertainment. These sites include Distracify, Vimeo, Youtube, Reddit, and many more.
As adults we have issue enough (having been converted from page-readers ourselves) with what we see as the newer media of communication. What do we do about the students who have ever known only that? Nicholas Carr, in his article "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" takes the point a step further, asserting that the modern preoccupation with gleaning information through technology is actually affecting our minds and habits adversely. He states in his article:
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Over the past few years, I've had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain . . . . My mind is . . . . changing. I can feel it most strongly when I'm reading. Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy. My mind would get caught up in the narrative or the turns of the argument, and I'd spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That's rarely the case anymore. Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages . . . . The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle.
The case is no different for our students, who more often prefer digital content to printed text. Carr goes on to say that the "someone" or "something" he refers to is the Internet – citing his "spending a lot of time online, searching and surfing and sometimes adding to the great databases of the Internet."
1
He touches on a trend that
adults
have to worry about – those of us who grew up with books, and not much more than dial-up Internet. What does this say about members of the modern young generation, who have
always
and
increasingly
known not much more than their cell phone or tablet devices as sources of information – either entertainment, "news," or otherwise?
Students
will
use their phones in class, which any teacher in the modern classroom is certain of. Whether it be for part of a class project or using it for distracting texting, Internet search, or even the dreaded "selfie," students seem to have an intrinsic need to view their phones as a habit, in their hearts and minds consistent with inquisitive questioning.
Therefore, it is logical to think that students will be open to the idea of using their cell phones
for
class assignments. Perhaps we can reverse what Carr is worried about – that brains are transitioning to be less dedicated to reading large blocks of text for extended periods of time, and more apt to opt for shorter, more superfluous bursts of information – but that is not what this unit is about. It is not about modifying behavior. It is about utilizing a habit that already exists. Teaching students to hone their Internet searches and habits to focus on more advantageous information gathering and synthesis may be the best route to address this growing problem.
Additionally, and for practical application of this new skill, it is important to note that this coincides with another existing problem – that too many high school students are being graduated without real research skills, and this partly because the concept of the research paper is unappealing to many. Once students synthesize the skill of using the myriad types of information available to them to search the Internet for meaningful information instead of superfluous, students will be tasked with utilizing that skill to execute effective research. The product will be a research paper dependent on pictures – presenting images that enhance the message of the words and vice versa: a graphic research paper.
