{"id":1620,"date":"2013-06-10T16:59:39","date_gmt":"2013-06-10T16:59:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/learnedleadership.org\/?p=1620"},"modified":"2013-06-10T16:59:39","modified_gmt":"2013-06-10T16:59:39","slug":"disconnected-avoiding-the-zombified-attention-span-black-hole","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/learnedleadership.org\/divi\/disconnected-avoiding-the-zombified-attention-span-black-hole\/","title":{"rendered":"Disconnect[ed]: Avoiding the Zombified-Attention-Span-Black-Hole"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><i>Our summer series Disconnect[ed] is a collection of blogs, articles, and videos examining what we&#8217;re not doing right with technology in school.\u00a0 Less about what software or hardware a school should be using, Disconnect[ed] examines what constant exposure to media, apps, texting, etc, is doing to the way we think and interact with each other, and what schools can do about it.<\/i><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m returning to the United States.&#8221;\u00a0 There I&#8217;ve said it.\u00a0 Yes, the guy who created a blog around international education is returning to the USA\u2026well kind of.\u00a0 Does Hawaii count as the USA?\u00a0 Probably, but it&#8217;s not the mainland, and it seems to reflect the unique mixture of Asian and American culture my family and I have grown accustomed to.\u00a0 Despite spending the majority of my life in the USA, in many ways I feel like an outsider looking in on a culture that is familiar, yet different at the same time.\u00a0 I&#8217;m sure if you&#8217;ve spent time away and then returned you&#8217;ve felt the same.<\/p>\n<p>As I mentioned in my last blog, while in the Philippines, I&#8217;ve managed to avoid the change smartphones have brought to modern culture.\u00a0 This is mostly because I&#8217;m too cheap and the network was too unreliable.\u00a0 Of course that doesn&#8217;t mean that others weren&#8217;t using this technology.\u00a0 The truth is I shouldn&#8217;t refer to smartphones with such distain, as it&#8217;s likely I&#8217;ll have one in a few short weeks, and they do provide a lot of convenient perks.<\/p>\n<p>However, I do have some frustrations and concerns as an educator and new repatriate that I need to get off my chest:<\/p>\n<p>Ok, Therapy time.\u00a0 When I see you on your smartphone in the middle of our conversation it hurts my feelings.\u00a0 When your child can&#8217;t get any work done in class without taking two-minute study breaks it makes me feel concerned.\u00a0 When a family goes out to dinner and the parents let their child play smartphones games through the whole meal, it makes me want to scream, and when the parents do it, it makes me want to cry.<\/p>\n<p>Is this what I have to look forward to as I reenter American culture&#8211;although it&#8217;s really everywhere.\u00a0 Here, watch this video to get a sense of my frustration:<\/p>\n<div class=\"embed-vimeo\" style=\"text-align: center;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/64490382\" width=\"1080\" height=\"608\" frameborder=\"0\" webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p>&#8220;So what does this have to do with school?&#8221; You might be thinking.\u00a0 Well I&#8217;m not fully sure yet.\u00a0 But as I look around at the pervasiveness of media and technology in our everyday lives I&#8217;m reminded of the seductive song of the Sirens in Homer&#8217;s <i>Odyssey<\/i>, or like a moth to a flame.\u00a0 Like the modern day Marshmallow Test, technology is delectable and hard to resist.\u00a0 Yet studies show us that a person&#8217;s ability to develop self-control is often a factor in their future success.\u00a0 So when I ask &#8216;what does this have to do with schools?&#8217; it means, what can we do as schools to help our students develop Tech-Control&#8211;self-control and the emotional intelligence to use technology for good, and avoid it&#8217;s harmful seductive side.\u00a0 In many ways it&#8217;s at the heart of the <i>Well-Rounded Learner <\/i>that so many of our mission and vision statements speak of.<\/p>\n<p>Yet, at the risk of reaching outside of our mandate, I believe constant exposure to technology is a problem that involves more than just our students, because if <i>Angry BIrds &amp; Tomb Runner<\/i> is the drug of choice, often parents are the drug dealers.\u00a0 Many parents have allowed smartphones to become the electronic nanny with no path back to engagement in a world with less tech.\u00a0 So what&#8217;s the point of teaching Tech-Control if the &#8220;dealer&#8221; is waiting to pick them up after school?\u00a0 Is it a lost cause?\u00a0 No, but it does make this challenge particularly difficult.\u00a0 Strides have been made in this area in Low-Tech, and Waldorf Schools, but what can we do in the mainstream to turn down the &#8220;noise&#8221; our students experience so they can use their tools effectively (and for leisure too), while avoiding the zombified-attention-span-black-hole?<\/p>\n<p>What do you think?\u00a0 Can you relate with the Tech-Angst in the video?\u00a0 Are we missing something, or are we way beyond our mandate in this area?\u00a0 Parents, what are your thoughts?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Our summer series Disconnect[ed] is a collection of blogs, articles, and videos examining what we&#8217;re not doing right with technology in school.\u00a0 Less about what software or hardware a school should be using, Disconnect[ed] examines what constant exposure to media, apps, texting, etc, is doing to the way we think and interact with each other, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1621,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[77,219,266],"class_list":["post-1620","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","category-disconnected","tag-disconnected","tag-smartphones","tag-zombie"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/learnedleadership.org\/divi\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/06\/disconnected-part-2-header.jpg?fit=900%2C220","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5BJbv-q8","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/learnedleadership.org\/divi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1620","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/learnedleadership.org\/divi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/learnedleadership.org\/divi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/learnedleadership.org\/divi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/learnedleadership.org\/divi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1620"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/learnedleadership.org\/divi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1620\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/learnedleadership.org\/divi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1621"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/learnedleadership.org\/divi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/learnedleadership.org\/divi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/learnedleadership.org\/divi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}