1) Jackson provides compelling evidence for the interplay between efficiency in our increasing compressed lives (e.g. multi-tasking, hyper-scheduling in smaller units, Taylorism or new forms of the industrial revolution) and chaos, fragmentation, and loss of discourse. Do you see evidence of this in the classroom, either in teaching or in student behaviors? How does the larger infrastructure (e.g. administrative duties, assessment) sustain this interplay?
2) Our students are entering the work world (and even graduate school) with increasing expectations for states of distraction. For example, employer’s expectations for multi-tasking, 24/7 access, state-of-the-art computer literacy, information overload, increased data processing, etc. How do we balance preparation for their professional lives with a sense of empowerment and agency in making choices regarding technology and distraction? 3) Several researchers and social critics in this book point to the Millennial age group as the “redo generation” (just restart the computer, redo your Facebook, reinvent the self) and the erosion of personal relationships; replaced by surface, “networked individualism.” In addition, the future suggests increased dependence on computers, the seduction of techno-modernistic competency, and expansion of computerized “services.” As faculty, how are we to avoid simply sounding like Luddites (anti-techno), generational laggards, sounding the alarm--“the sky is falling” and/or simply privileging the face-to-face over the mediated world of our students? In short, how to we insure our credibility as faculty/scholars and avoid ideological traps?
4) What resonated for you in this book? (E.g. reactions, question raised, skepticism). Were there any chapters/comments that you thought were particularly relevant to teaching?
NOTE: The responses to the above questions were synthesized around common themes.
PREPARING STUDENTS FOR THE WORKPLACE
In every discipline, we want students to be able to focus on what they’re doing—I see this career of manic frenzy, and this one that might offer an actual life, what am I going to do? There’s money in the first, but not the second.
Yes, we are supposed to be about professional development. It seems to me that a better way to approach this would be to ask, ‘What does this particular distraction indicate for my profession?’ In mathematics, students need to be able to focus, and if they encounter a problem, be able to get stuck and work it out. I think in English you’d have similar things. You know, what effect does taking that call every three pages of reading a novel going to have on grasping the novel? It seems to me the overarching model of anti-distraction in our discipline is finding out what the perils of distraction are, and what makes you less able to be proficient?
The virtue of starting out locating the question in reference to discipline is that it denotes looking at technology as a tool.
TECHNOLOGY IN THE CLASSROOM
Teachers are now graded on using technology for being hip and hot, when in reality it is the technology that is hurting us. Keeping class assignments ‘low-tech’ saves money, but students don’t want the basic simplicity. Can we really keep jobs if teachers don’t engage in the technology—having to be forced to use internet? Professors lose points for not using technology. The system is to use power points for students rather than show actual art work.
As faculty, is there a way to validate the student’s “need” for technology without compromising the learning of everyone in the classroom?
Dig deeply. Technology is not the enemy; it is the usage of it.
Professors need to take responsibility for the class. If it is boring, students will get distracted. Make the material interesting. Students need constant entertainment.
Professors believe in asking questions. Engage the class without being entertaining. Provide relevancy.
Suggest the importance of being present in class. “For these two hours, focus in class. Use your time wisely. Make lists, idea lists, to prevent your mind from worrying about forgetting information. It could be a way to prevent distraction. The list can become the thing instead of the action.
Some courses require technology. Is it a double edge sword telling them that I-phones aren’t important, but being successful today means being proficient?
This could be something that students grow out of. Sound bites of learning are not interesting. Teaching snippet classes aren’t interesting to teach or learn. Show students what it’s like to delve deeper instead of highlights. Maybe the best thing to do is to demonstrate a deep conversation.
Focus classes might be more beneficial instead of broad sweeping surface level information. It is more interesting once you get past the boring entry level education classes. The quarter system breeds surface. Time is not allowed to revise and remain on one topic.
MULTI-TASKING: PROS AND CONS
Asking about the workplace and whether or not multi-tasking will be necessary for this generation, what did we do 14 years ago? What’s the difference in the product now? Filmmakers before managed. Is there a difference in the film now? Is the quality better because of advanced technology, or worse because of the lack of focus?
I think that this multi-tasking leads to other layers of multi-tasking, unless you’re able to see the whole picture and quite in depth. You’re working five times harder in terms of trying to accomplish what you need.
It’s funny that we lose so much time and money due to distraction. I think maybe that’s part of why Americans work so much longer than in other nations. Maybe if students were less wired, and we taught time management, and they actually saw the results of doing well and mastering subjects, they would realize, yeah, you have to be able to multitask, but you’re wasting so much time, too.
We are feeding off the distractions; it’s a continuous cycle that never ends. We want tasks that acquire attention and discipline to be made easier. Without music or background noise, students fear that nothing is going on in their head.
Students insist that distractions like music create a good reading environment. They cannot read without music. Perhaps students are able to handle multitasking better than their predecessors. Maybe it is the next step of evolution. Will we be okay with this shift? Are we being alarmist?
Even if the next generation is better at multitasking, how do we teach them?
This could be a phase. Could a point be reached where surface relationships will not be fulfilling anymore?
ABILITY TO FOCUS (or Lack Thereof)
I didn’t really start using a computer until I starting working at Baylor, and what I knew about them before that was that they were beige. I had spent my time before in a cubicle, focusing intensely, so for me it was a detriment.
I wish that younger generations focused on the benefits of focus. They don’t realize that another way of interaction exists.
Culture is encouraging us to disengage. We want to be distracted through our culture. Students are not obsessed with anything—writing, etc. Students just lack the passion that we no longer have. Staff remember being totally obsessed with writing while in school, etc. Being passionate takes too much time. No one can sit to study art; they want to know what they’re looking for. TV is full of scene cuts, versus the opera. Opera becomes strenuous. We are being trained for ADD.
Boredom is not a bad thing. It is a stressful situation, and we have lost the true definition of boredom. We are escaping from anxiety in our everyday life. Anxiety is a disclosing emotion of individual, human freedom. We don’t want to deal with options so we allow ourselves to be passively distracted in many ways. Bored people, unless asleep, are cruel. We need to use our freedom to face ourselves. Anxiety is seen as negative in our culture.
There is so much out there. Students have to define themselves. Definitions are necessary.
READING
Students for years have not known how to read by following sentences in a paragraph or down a page. For some, they create a rule that reading is a sacred place, no touching it, taking notes, etc—distracts from the actual reading. Yellow highlighter is the worse invention known right now. Students struggle writing in the marginal texting, unable to carry on a conversation with the text—students attempt to avoid it at all costs.
If we are unable to write in our book, we are not really engaging with texts. High schools are ruining the engagement of text. We need to find a balance with highlighting and not touching it.
One professor had students read a small book, about 100 pages, and then after each page was read, it had to be torn out of the book, and thrown away. Compression went way up because students were forced to remember what they were reading.
Continuous idea of ‘returning to the text’ is a bad idea, that we have the illusion to keep going back to something is wrong.
EMAIL
Emails are a requirement today. Professors have several different email accounts to differentiate between “lives.” In school, personal life, hobbies, friends, etc…
There is an expectation not apparent until recently. Faculty feel forced to be on demand for the students 24/7. In evaluations it comes down to the response of emails. Faculty feel the need to caution students that they may not respond to emails right away.
Students need an immediate response because they don’t pre-plan.
Students choose other medium besides office hours.
STUDENTS’ STATE OF BUSYNESS
Students say they are busy and tired. They are overwhelmed with their schedules. Students are working and have a life with school on the side. I am surprised by the amount of hours students work. Work schedules take precedence over school schedules.
Students’ signatures on emails list all of their activities—overloading, triple majors, students put it upon themselves and think they have to.
The cost of education and society’s pressure to be able to multi-task with internships and clubs encourages distraction. There is a requirement to multi-task. We live in a culture of this approved crowdedness. We encourage busyness by the way we take in and share information. Being busy equals being successful.
What do students really know/get about this? We can’t communicate with student to not be this way because the job market demands it. By saying this to students teachers seem archaic and not part of the student’s “time.”
Faculty have to reach higher, too. They are not exempt. Demands on scholarship are higher, even though it is not written out to do more. Faculty have to do service requirements.
Higher student acceptance rates and class times changing add to this pressure.
Institutions can encourage the behavior. This is not necessarily bad, just complicated.
BALANCE AND CONSCIOUS DECISION MAKING
It reminds me of Stephen King’s book, Call. Writers of big box horror are aware of the fact that people are addicted. So if you have to be able to do it to make a living, is that a bad thing? After all, my brain’s already wired for it. It gets into a value conflict. I’m aware of the generational gap. It gets into an old person v. young people thing. You see it in The Spectator, Seattle Weekly, and The Stranger. Are we responsible for inciting people to change it? Maybe a little double insight, a little balance. My email’s ringing all day at work, but when I’m at home, I don’t have to carry that into my space. I think being aware that it’s operating on you is half the battle.
It’s self-perpetuating. I think we need to think about applying it to specific disciplines rather than a blanket state of living. There’s our discipline, and there’s what we are doing. You need to be able to turn that off, shut the door.
I think it’s a matter of stepping back and thinking about how we are going to choose for ourselves. That kind of gets back to agency; ‘Am I freely choosing this? Am I acting upon my reading, or is my reading acting upon me?’ For me, that’s another way to talk to students; ‘are those texts acting through you, or other way around?’
Everyone in choir is a volunteer, so it’s very interesting to notice the different disciplines that come in. We have math, business, philosophy, psychology. The people who do the best at it are the people who slog away every day. I think it’s the modeling of that that helps. I think if people have the example of their peers, it is a very powerful statement because it’s coming from beside them rather than from the top down. This person succeeded because they turned their phone off and worked on it every day. We get feedback from people who have already been in choir about ways that they’ve found useful, and students listen to their peers.
OTHER THOUGHTS
Robbing children of the idea of experiment really hampers students from learning about who they are. They can’t go down any paths. Parents are hurting their children with all of the monitoring that is going on. How can students survive if parents won’t let them learn how?
Is media usage an avoidance of pain? Is it wrong to want to feel good by media usage? Are people able to function? Are we a successful society with the media overload?