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Scott McLeod- Dangerously Irrelevant: February 11, 2018: The Real Reason We Ban Cell Phones

One of Scott McLeod's recent blogs was very short, but also very powerful.  He began with a quote by Marc Prensky.  Marc's quote was focused around the idea that if we allowed students to have cell phones in classrooms they would "vote with their attention."  Essentially, if students had cell phones and they became bored in a class, they would simply choose to use their cell phone instead of engage in class.  Marc's idea was that we do not allow cell phones in class because we don't want students to have the opportunity to "vote with their attention." He compared the way that students "vote with their attention" to the way that "adults vote with their feet."  When adults are not compelled by a meeting or presentation, they have the choice to leave.  This really rang true to me, as I have been at PD's where we were given a choice of sessions to attend and I often chose to leave certain sessions and attend a different one if I didn't feel that the session was engaging to me or what I needed at the time.

"We can mandate their attendance but it’s nearly impossible to mandate their attention."
Scott ended his blog post with this quote.  This quote definitely made me think about the different ways that we choose to engage our students and demand their attention, which in a lot of ways connects to this course.  We have discussed in this course a lot about using technology to engage students, therefore this blog post left me thinking, "Are my lessons engaging and am I intentionally using technology to engage my students or if my students could 'vote with their attention' would they choose to disengage by using a cell phone?"

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