So I have had a very busy day. Like you all I imagine. I have been working with my pal Luke on our Professional Learning day tomorrow, planning hexagonal synthesis activities, minion lenses, logistics and furniture placement. Then working on improving listening skills with Y11, meeting, planning, plotting "managing" Emerging Sciences Victoria, setting up video classrooms, figuring how to broadcast video from a microscope and shopping for stationery. My day has not been stationary. So I finally settled down to write this blog when I went to close some tabs on chrome. Just as I went to close the Facebook tab, I noticed that Suan, a connoisseur of the hilarious YouTube clip, posted Jimmy Kimmel's "Mean Tweets" segment. The simple idea of having celebrities read out real, mean tweets about themselves. The outcome is mesmerising, painful and hilarious. To hear Sofía Vergara say "What is wrong with having a d**k in my mouth" is just great TV. But it did make me think of a more serious issue (beyond the obvious bullying, social media and celebrity problems).
Our young people are constantly jacked in to a stream of distractions, from Facebook (which they are all abandoning like rats apparently), to Instagram, the deliberately ephemeral SnapChat and the exponentially exploding YouTube, with 100 hours of new video being uploaded every minute. EVERY MINUTE. (Just as an aside, why are all of the names of these distraction made up of CompoundNouns?)
Even my own practice; I have 30 tabs open on Chrome - none of which I can close in case of #FOMO (fear of missing out) or #FOFS (fear of forgetting something) or #FOFU (fear of f****ing up) because as you know, #YOLO. I have hangouts open in case Suan sends me a YouTube clip, I have Viber open so I can chat with my family and friends, I just left this post because my phone buzzed and reply to Diane cost me 1 (worthwhile) minute of my time, I have Spotify pumping music into my head and twitter tweeting me, whilst my Google plus notifications keep piling up. So many distractions sucking me in. And I am a grown up. How soul destroyingly #FOMO it must be to sit through a lesson which is not as engaging as my next snapchat or as challenging as my next tweet. Where I am slave to the teacher's whimsy and do not own my own time. Where I am taught instead of learning. Where my wings are clipped and my distractions are unable to take me away from the mundane.
Learning needs balance. The locus of control, the responsibility of managing distraction, the choices to be made, the pace of learning, the content, the process the whole thing needs to be skillfully managed by both learner and teacher. As a teacher, I strive to take a tight/loose/tight/loose approach to my pedagogical choices. Sometimes I am in total control and skilfully (I hope) guide my learners to our intended destination, but sometimes, I have to give them the opportunity to be distracted, to be off task, to fail so that they can better learn to self regulate.
And let's face it, some distractions are hilarious...
You just distracted me from prepping my workshop today. Thanks.
Posted by: Ewan McIntosh | February 03, 2015 at 11:07 PM