If I had been a well-behaved primary school student, who showed diligence and responsibility, I would be allowed to take home with me ‘the AlphaSmart’. That’s right, the piece of technology so low-tech and short-lived that you have never heard of it (probably). This not overly state of the art device was a keyboard coupled with a little LCD screen for writing and, no wait, just writing. When I got my hands on this digital typewriter I was off, drafting stories on the bus, on the couch, and everywhere in between until I would get back to class and upload it to the class computer. I don’t need to explain to anyone ‘how far technology has come’ since then of course, although do find this image a nice summary of this progress even if it is a few years old now.
Yet there seems to be an almost full circle however, when one considers the new ‘FreeWriter Traveler’ the ‘Ultimate Distraction-Free Writing Tool’ that is, for all intents and purposes, an AlphaSmart. No gimmicks, no apps, in fact nothing for you to do other than write, in an effort to curb our procrastination and get back to basics. In fact AlphaSmart have a relatively new version out as well, along similar lines. It would seem as if human behaviour has not kept up with technology as we grapple to control ourselves in a world that is so fast-paced and information-soaked. Indeed we now know that there is a direct negative correlation between the number of links in an article and our comprehension of said article, or the proximity of a smartphone to our person and our cognitive capacity. Of course this idea is nothing new and is evident in a number of apps and tools designed to help us retain our focus, now even being built directly into operating systems. But what I find fascinating is the way in which silence and the parameters for focus are now largely a luxury. We need to pay for the premium version of the focus app, or for the airport lounge that has fewer things in it battling for our attention. Of course, you will still no doubt need these glasses, even in that special airport lounge. Increasingly, the have and have-not divide will be measured by the amount of advertising and data sharing we are exposed to, making it harder to focus and more sensical to tease out the individual components of the all-in-one device we now all carry, into the writing tool, the camera, the music player. That is of course, unless we can equip ourselves to deal with the smorgasbord of attention ‘black holes’ presented to us constantly as, after all, we pay attention much like we pay for other things - with a limited supply that we need to be mindful of at all times lest it run out and leave us broke.
More now than ever I consider it vital that we embed into, not simple add to, our educational practice the explicit development of those skills and attributes which allow our students to navigate this. Starting with awareness, and finishing with a wallet of attention that only gets opened after careful consideration - the result of critical analysis and logical thinking. It is this internal control, and not the plethora of apps and tools that attempt to externally control our attention, that is what will allow our students to navigate the maze and ‘get stuff done’. As Cal Newport suggests, "Deep work is the killer app of the knowledge economy… if you can download this app into your life it's going to be incredibly effective."