Why don’t we turn schools into ‘a place of digital rest’?
A modest proposal for bucking the trend on digital technologies.
I often write about what it takes to implement cell phone policy in school. Given that I teach an all-things-tech class (and facing the stark reality that a cell phone has become most people’s primary device), asking them to not touch their phones for at least seven hours a day is a big ask. Sure, the smartphone is our digital Swiss Army knife. I use it to scan QR codes, convert speech to text, and listen to podcasts among other things. Denying its use could be considered having things backward. But, our students do know that, far from being Luddites, we have their interest in mind.
It’s not a ban in the way teachers once outlawed Wikipedia. (Or, apparently calculators, much before that.) We are simply asking students to pause the use of the device while they are in class, or for that matter during any other activity during school hours. We want them to not forfeit their attention to Silicon Valley’s distraction industrial complex. (See ‘Attention hacker’s trap.’) We want them to fire up their neurons, not their apps. To burst out of our classes with ideas, not memes.
And I’ve seen it happen.
Exhibit 1: Around this time of the year I my students work on their eBooks. Sans phones, they become designers, storytellers, poets, and artists. They’re primed for fiction, documentary, humor, gore — yes, lots of Hitchcock’s and Stephen Kings in the making. Take a look at the eBooks they created over the past few years.
I’m convinced this would never happen if there was a phone on their desk. A headmaster of a classical school in Dallas, Fr. Jon Jordan, succinctly described a similar policy they had this way: “We are a place of digital rest.”
A place of ‘Digital Rest! It’s the best explanation I have come across.
Digital restfulness is not common. Take church, where the missal is often accessed on a phone. Remember when an airline flight used to be a place when we were literally off the grid? Or when corporate meetings required us to leave our phone outside? Sure we cannot go back to that time, but we could occasionally hit the mute button.
I am all for ‘EdTech’ as long as it doesn’t short-cut the creative process. Digital media platforms sold our youth on content consumption. Non-stop doom-scrolling, clicking, liking, sharing — elbowing out the time for thoughtful conversations and creativity. There’s a reason Creativity is at the top of Blooms taxonomy.
So I am calling any teacher who reads this to consider this:
- Explain the rationale. Show them the science behind cell phones — the battle for their attention, and how it’s rewiring their brains.
2. Resist the temptation to give students Kahoot and Photomath assignments, when there are many alternatives to student engagement that don’t involve a distraction device.
3. Get them to produce three times as much as they consume content online. They can. They will. Their minds are ready.
You won’t be disappointed!
