Running Head: EXPLORING THE INTERSECTION OF EDTECH AND SLOW 1

Exploring the Intersection of EdTech and SLOW:

Harnessing Attention and Promoting Slowness Through

Education and Technology Design in the Classroom

Anne Coustalin

University of British Columbia

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Abstract

Todays students are following a trajectory to an adult life of constant and ubiquitous technology: where

technology is always on and always on you (Turkle, 2006). Constant immersion in technology is not

without cost, however, and recent studies have demonstrated tangible negative effects on our attention

and cognitive functioning. In this context, educators have a clear opportunity and responsibility to

support students in finding balance. This paper explores various ways that educators can help their

students learn to understand and value attention and to make room for slowness in their lives. Topics

explored include education around the limits to attention and incorporating slow design into education

technology in the classroom.

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Exploring the Intersection of EdTech and SLOW: Harnessing Attention and Promoting Slowness through

Education and Technology Design in the Classroom

The impact of frequent and ubiquitous technology on the human population in the 21 st century has

been a topic of much recent analysis and study. The effects of a fast-paced, media saturated lifestyle

impact most of us, fracturing our attention and instilling an artificial sense of constant crisis (Stone,

2009). Constant and ubiquitous technology is the coming, and in some cases, current reality of many of

our students. In order to truly prepare them for a successful and balanced adult life, educators must help

them take control of their attention and make room for slowness: to teach them why, when and how to

slow down, and to offer slowness through design in education technology.

Young people today have been labelled in various ways. They have been called Digital Natives

(Prensky, 2001), Millennials (Strauss & Howe, 2009), and Generation Y. Making generalizations about

whole generations of young people can, of course, be problematic. In one area, however, theorists seem

to agree. Young people today have grown up in a world of increasingly pervasive technology and they are

much heavier users of technology than any generation of young people before them. While, as Bennett

and Manton argued, there may be significant variation in the ways in which young people use

technology (2010, p. 10), it has been shown that media use is widespread among the young. As Ridout,

Foehr, and Roberts reported in their comprehensive study Generation M 2: Media in the Lives of 8-18

Year-Olds:

On a typical day, 8- to 19-year-olds in [the United States] spend more than 7 hours

(7:38) using media - almost equivalent of a full work day, except that they are using

media seven days a week instead of five. Moreover, since young people spend so much

of that time using two or more media concurrently, they are actually exposed to more

than 10 hours (10:45) of media content during that period. (2010, p. 11)
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The above mentioned study had the benefit of having been conducted three times, with five year

interval periods between studies. This allowed the study authors to take note of trends in media use.

One of the more significant trends they noted was the increase in media multitasking: According to our

media use diaries, more than a quarter (29%) of the time young people use media, they use two or more

media concurrently (Ridout, Foehr & Roberts, 2010, p. 30). A different study, published in 2011,

monitored participants by video to measure and record the frequency of gaze switching between

mediums (in this case, computer and television). Their findings were astonishing.

Video records reveal that participants switched between media at an extremely high

rate, averaging 120 switches in 27.5 minutes. This is reflected in a median gaze length of

only 1.77 seconds for television gazes and 5.3 seconds for computer gazes. (Brasel and

Gips, 2011, p. 530)

The short duration of gazes suggests a fracturing of attention with rapid attentional shifts and

reorientation.

Is it possible to focus on two different information streams at once? Can media multitasking be

described as multitasking at all? Simple multitasking involves performing only one task that involves

cognition, while performing a second task that is more procedural or passive (Rose, 2010). With the

exception of situations where one of the incoming streams is experienced in a passive manner and

attention is not switching back and forth between streams (example: having music playing in the

background while reading), evidence around attention and cognition would seem to point to task-

switching rather than genuine multitasking.

In examining the significance of task-switching in the school environment, consider the case of cell

phones among students - particularly middle and high school students. As any middle or high school

teacher can tell you, texting during class is an ongoing source of distraction. As outlined in a (2011)

project study, half of teens send 50 or more text messages a day, or 1,500 texts a month, and one in
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three send more than 100 texts a day (Lenhart, Ling, Campbell & Purcell). It is clear from these studies

that personal communication technology offers tremendous opportunity for distraction. But how much

are students affected by the distraction?

In 2014, Gingerich and Lineweaver published the results of their study on the effects of texting in class

on student success. The resulting article: OMG! Texting in class= u fail:( outlined how, when students

were texting, they were not simultaneously focusing on class material (in this case a lecture). Instead,

they were shifting their attention back and forth between the lecture and their cell phones.

There are two immediate factors at play in this case. The first is the time cost related to the task-

switching itself. As Rubinstein, Meyer and Evans demonstrated, task-alternation yields measurable

switching-time costs that increase with the complexity of material (2001). The second is that when

cognitive attention is focused on one incoming stream, it is not focussed on the other. As Kahneman

reports in his book, Thinking Fast and Slow:

The often-used phrase pay attention is apt: you dispose of a limited budget of

attention that you can allocate to activities, and if you try to go beyond your budget, you

will fail. It is the mark of effortful activities that they interfere with each other, which is

why it is difficult or impossible to conduct several at once. (2001, p. 25)

It stands to reason then, that students who are interrupted, and who interrupt themselves a number

of times during class, are unable to pay sufficient attention to the business of learning. The results of

Gingerich and Lineweavers study certainly support this assertion. The results of our two experiments

showed that, on average, students who text during class can decrease their initial learning from a B level

(i.e., 81.11%) to a D level (i.e., 66.78%) (2014, p. 49). Frequent task-switching in the form of texting in

class is distracting and comes with measurable cost to students. But what of media multitasking outside

the school environment? Does it impact academic performance?

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In 2009, Ophira, Nassb, and Wagnerc released their oft-cited paper Cognitive Control in Media

Multitaskers. In it, they examined the lasting effects of media multitasking on cognition and attention,

exploring whether there are systematic differences in information processing styles between people who

describe themselves as chronically heavy media multitaskers (HMMs) and light media multitaskers

(LMMs). The studys findings were surprising and unequivocal.

HMMs have greater difficulty filtering out irrelevant stimuli from their environment . . .

they are less likely to ignore irrelevant representations in memory (two- and three-

back tasks), and they are less effective in suppressing the activation of irrelevant task

sets (task-switching). (Ophira et al, 2009, p. 3)

The study data indicated that individuals who engage in frequent and heavy media multitasking have less

ability to control the focus of their attention and are much more easily distracted. These effects persist

outside of the scope of the media-saturated environment. Clearly there is a case to be made for

attempting to consciously reduce the distractions in our media-saturated lifestyle.

Students engage in media multitasking in their home environments, but also at school when they

work with digital technologies. In my experience as a teacher on call working in several different schools

I note that, unless heavily supervised, students almost never have just one browser window open while

working on computers. They are often flipping between multitudes of media-based activities: the

assigned work, social media, email, texting, and even gaming and online shopping: all this while listening

to music on their iPods or texting on their phones.

What is it that motivates people to choose to fracture and juggle their attention? Linda Stone offers a

compelling answer. She describes a phenomenon that she calls continuous partial attention. In order to

help us understand the term, she begins by differentiating it from multitasking. The difference, she says,

lies in the impulses that motivate them. When we multitask, we are motivated by a desire to be more
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productive and more efficient. With continuous partial attention, on the other hand, we are motivated

by a desire to connect and be connected.

We pay continuous partial attention in an effort NOT TO MISS ANYTHING. It is an

always-on, anywhere, anytime, any place behavior that involves an artificial sense of

constant crisis.. . . To be busy, to be connected, is to be alive, to be recognized, and to

matter. (Stone, 2009, np)

What are the implications of this phenomenon for students? In relating her experience with her own

students, working in a technology heavy environment, Ellen Rose reports an emergent cognitive style of

short and constantly shifting attention and a reality where, even as students are engaged in learning,

they are still in a state of hyper-awareness: scanning the periphery for incoming email, instant

messages, and other communications and contacts (Rose, 2010, p. 3).

Can learning occur in such a distraction-rich environment? After all, as Tobin Hart explains: What we

know of effective learning is that the predominant factor is not merely time on task; it is the quality of

attention brought to that task (2004, p. 35). Attention, then, must be reclaimed. As Stone explains, If

we dont choose where we want to direct our attention, there will always be something in our path to

misdirect it . . . every choice we dont make is made for us (Stone 2014). But harnessing our attention

may be easier said than done. After all, maintaining a coherent train of thought requires discipline. The

experience can be unpleasant as we struggle for top-down control. Achieving that control though, can

lead to what psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi refers to as an optimal experience, a state of flow,

described as a state of effortless concentration so deep that one loses one's sense of time, of oneself, of

one's problems (1991). In order to create an environment capable of fostering a state of flow, educators

and students must work on a double front. They must work consciously to harness their attention and

they must make room for reflection and awareness.

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The first step in this process is for students to internalize the value of protecting their attention.

Without that, they will be unlikely to see change as anything but restrictive and injurious to their rights.

As Stone explained, being connected is considered analogous to being worthwhile (2009). Because

connectedness is so highly esteemed, it behooves educators to convince students that the payoff for

restricting connectedness (in certain situations) is to their benefit. It is essential that educators teach

students about the potential pitfalls of continuously allowing themselves to be interrupted by

technology, as well as the cognitive effect of multitasking and, in particular media multitasking.

The best way to teach students is to have them actively involved in the learning. One way to do that

is to demonstrate those effects first hand through student experimentation. Several such experiments

are available online at teaching websites. In Proving the Myth of Multitasking with a simple

experiment, Chase Mielke outlines an experiment appropriate for younger students in which students

compare how they do at a simple arithmetic task while multitasking to how they do performing a single

task without distraction (nd.). For high school aged students, it would be useful to have students perform

an inquiry project of their own around attention, media multitasking, the connection between

connectivity and perceived self-worth and/or other related topics with an aim of growing their

knowledge in that sphere in an authentic manner. Findings could be shared with the class and a wide

base of understanding thus created. While I have outlined only two ways educators can support

students to internalize the value of protecting their attention, there are obviously many others.

Once students begin to understand importance of reducing distraction and focusing their attention

on one task at a time, it is appropriate to begin introducing restrictive measures. The key here is not

simply to remove technology from the equation, but rather to harness technology to minimize

distraction in a technologically enhanced learning environment.

A few particularly interesting distraction-reducing designs were presented by the design team at

Hugo Eccles Designs at the London 2011 Slow Tech Exhibit (http://www.coolhunting.com/design/slow-
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tech). The first of these designs, The Social Timer shuts off connectivity to social media within a room

for a set duration. This device seems particularly well suited to a mindful pedagogical environment in

that the class could be involved in the decision when to use it and for how long, thus consciously making

space for attention and focus. The second device, The Social Thermostat, has a wall-mounted display

much like a thermostat. It allows for the setting of desired connectivity to social media in the room and

displays the social temperature of the room. While this device is not designed to be tamper-proof,

perhaps modifications could be made and each room in the building could be set to the appropriate

social temperature to best reduce distractions. The Social Sentinel is another social connectivity

reducing device. It has a programmable intensity setting that is pre-set. The device is mounted on the

ceiling and visible to students. It removes connectivity to social networks at all times while in the room.

None of the above devices address the problem of texting over the fundamental voice network. That is a

challenge that remains to be addressed in the design world.

The above designs point to an emerging interest in blocking out distractions and creating space for

true engagement. While originally designed for use in home or social environments, the designs could

also function in a school environment, potentially freeing our students from their state of hyper-

awareness and making space where learning can occur. By making students aware of the presence of

slow technology, they become part of the conversation around consciously creating environments to

minimize distraction.

Beyond restricting connectivity, there are also several technologies that exist to support the physical

well-being of technology users. A few of these were outlined by Linda Stone in a 2014 lecture at MIT.

Stone calls them essential self technologies and describes them as: passive, ambient, non-invasive;

promoting flow-like states and embodiment. Some of the technologies she suggests could be particularly

effective in the learning environment, including one that adjusts screen tone to circadian rhythms and

another that plays music designed to promote engagement and harness attention. Users can choose
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from various types of music that have been collected and compiled so that once the channel is selected,

the user can hand over control to the program. Music, which is so often a source of distraction for

students, becomes instead a tool to help them harness their attention.

Once distractions have been reduced, slowness can also be incorporated by design into the learning

environment in novel ways. Hallns and Redstrm describe the difference between slow and fast

technology: With fast technology we aim to take away time. . . A key issue in slow technology, as a

design philosophy, is that we should use slowness in learning, understanding and presence to give

people time to think and reflect (2001, p. 3). Designs that promote long term reflection would be a

good way to make space for slowness in the classroom. One idea that could be useful in promoting

slowness in education technology is the design of a platform for electronic portfolios that travel with

individual students throughout their entire learning journey, which could be revisited, reflected upon,

and added to. Another idea, inspired by Odom et al.s Photobox project (2014), is digitally curated daily

reflection journals that could allow for regular revisitation of randomly selected journal entries from

earlier in the learning journey. Reflecting on entries from the past would promote a more holistic

understanding for students of their learning journey. And, because students would experience reflection

journals as living artifacts that persist beyond the day they are written, they might be also more inclined

to write thoughtfully. Slow design ideas like these have the potential to enable a less linear experience

of time and allow students to be present in the moment while also connecting with the moments that

came before.

Through a focus on self-regulation and the incorporation of slow design ideas in the classroom,

students could begin to internalize the benefits of harnessing their attention and being present in each

moment. They could make thoughtful choices as to when they want to be connected and socially

available and also, sometimes, choose to be unavailable. As educators, it behooves us to promote a

slower, less distracted approach to technology-mediated learning and to help students understand the
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costs associated with a high-speed, always-on lifestyle. In this way, we can empower students to make

mindful changes to the way they interact with technology: with positive effects to their wellbeing both in

school and in the world at large.

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