As a design professor in the undergraduate level, I can say first hand that attention is the now currency. Also in my experience as a web designer and developer, attention is gold. I have had much success with my students using collaboration as a teaching tool. As designers, collaboration is key. Without it, we would be all working in a vacuum, which would only produce results with no reach into the world.
My #etmooc experience has only solidified this concept for me. The antiquated models of teaching and learning (built during the industrial revolution that we still use today — See Sir Ken Robinson’s video below), are incompatible with the methods of connected learning, and with the needs and demands of 21st century students. We are a hyper-connected people that require information and experiences to happen on our time, with our interests at hand. Pedagogy traditionalists would argue “you cant always get what you want (but you try sometimes)” and “I can’t possibly teach for every individual student!”, but I would disagree. What if we could learn the things we want, when we want, and actually enjoy the learning process? How can education be transformed in our 24/7, Facebook culture? Maybe the problem is not if our students are paying attention, but giving them something worth “paying” attention to…
Tonights session on #etmooc is all about attention, collaboration and cutting through the noise that exists in the learning space. One of my favorite moments of tonight was when Howard was describing how he experimented with video in his class to document the attention of his students. A great exercise for any teacher in any classroom. You’re students are paying attention, but to what?
Pay attention, to paying attention
Mindfullness = Metacognition
Howard talks about how we can train ourselves to learn what we pay attention to. The more mindful we are of what we spend our attention currency on, the more we can learn about what are the most important items that warrant such spending. Howard has a few different techniques for getting his students to practice metacognition, including writing lists in the moment of the things they are thinking about, as well as videoing his students during class and showing their behavior during a set amount of time. These experiments allowed students to start thinking about attention as a trainable thing they can control, as well as making their attention spending visible.
When asked about if he has his students turn off their tech in class, Howard goes into how tech is critical to his course, but to be clear with students that it is obvious when they are Facebooking or checking email. He also thinks it is not a bad thing, but over-use can be annoying if it gets in the way of the class time. Howard describes multitasking as a natural part of our brain operation, and some people can even be ‘Supertaskers’.
I like Howard’s method of keeping track of daily goals, and making lists of these goals on pen-and-paper. By keeping this list in the periphery of your vision on your desk, and not on a sticky in your main view, you can glance back to re-orient yourself if you end up drifting or losing your place when working. This should help you spend your attention more wisely.