In one of my class to become an high school teacher, we were thought about some best practices for learning and studying on your own.
Just the fact that you can see your phone (not the screen, just the body) is actively harming your ability to learn. It’s because phone are machines to notify you and just seeing, or even feeling it in your pocket, unconsciously makes you alert to its notifications.
The professor after that went on to say that, if you’re going to use a laptop, use it to actually take note, nothing else. Since the screen is so big, lots of people can see it, and scrolling through Facebook (or other) impacts your ability to listen (duh, you’re doing something else), but also to the others, because it take the attention away from the class, to the screen of the laptop, even if it isn’t your laptop. So even Uni student might have to think about how they use their devices…
The best thing about that class was that everything was back with studies! So this isn’t just the teacher saying “screw technology!”, but actual science!
I had an English teacher in 2015 who also based her cell phone rules around science too. It was “phones are allowed, but use them respectfully” on the basis that you are more likely to be focused if you have access to your technology and can quickly check a notification and then put it away. She said you are more distracted by a notification when you don’t know what it is, so we were always allowed to pull our phones out and check what was happening. Funnily enough, this freedom and mutual respect caused there to be minimal phone use in that classroom.
I have no doubt that it can improve the class dynamic! Trust is always a good thing to have a good respect relation between a teacher and students!
And I agree that having a notification and not being allowed to look at it is not useful, if I remember the study actually showed that. But what is definitely better is not being notified at all. To test that, they asked every student to leave the phone in the hallway, so in another room. I’m not talking about the feasibility (risk of theft and other things), but there is a clear impact.
And I was in HS at the same time as you, but honestly, the class dynamic today is way different than it used to be even less then 10 years ago. It surprised me during my internship! I actually had the same policy as your teacher (you can use your phone, respectfully), but clearly I didn’t master it… 😅
In one of my class to become an high school teacher, we were thought about some best practices for learning and studying on your own.
Just the fact that you can see your phone (not the screen, just the body) is actively harming your ability to learn. It’s because phone are machines to notify you and just seeing, or even feeling it in your pocket, unconsciously makes you alert to its notifications.
The professor after that went on to say that, if you’re going to use a laptop, use it to actually take note, nothing else. Since the screen is so big, lots of people can see it, and scrolling through Facebook (or other) impacts your ability to listen (duh, you’re doing something else), but also to the others, because it take the attention away from the class, to the screen of the laptop, even if it isn’t your laptop. So even Uni student might have to think about how they use their devices…
The best thing about that class was that everything was back with studies! So this isn’t just the teacher saying “screw technology!”, but actual science!
I had an English teacher in 2015 who also based her cell phone rules around science too. It was “phones are allowed, but use them respectfully” on the basis that you are more likely to be focused if you have access to your technology and can quickly check a notification and then put it away. She said you are more distracted by a notification when you don’t know what it is, so we were always allowed to pull our phones out and check what was happening. Funnily enough, this freedom and mutual respect caused there to be minimal phone use in that classroom.
I have no doubt that it can improve the class dynamic! Trust is always a good thing to have a good respect relation between a teacher and students!
And I agree that having a notification and not being allowed to look at it is not useful, if I remember the study actually showed that. But what is definitely better is not being notified at all. To test that, they asked every student to leave the phone in the hallway, so in another room. I’m not talking about the feasibility (risk of theft and other things), but there is a clear impact.
And I was in HS at the same time as you, but honestly, the class dynamic today is way different than it used to be even less then 10 years ago. It surprised me during my internship! I actually had the same policy as your teacher (you can use your phone, respectfully), but clearly I didn’t master it… 😅