It Takes Flexibility!

It takes more flexibility than you know to be the school librarian.  I posted about this topic earlier in the month for my monthly GLMA post.  The past couple of days have been shining examples of this as well.

What would you do if there was an unplanned morning morning meeting that ran right up until you had to run the morning broadcast/announcements show and then you have a slight window of opportunity to set up for an incoming class but as they are walking in the door you realize you can't do the lesson you've planned because of a technical problem.  You have a class of 4th graders patiently waiting (if you're lucky) and all you have is a cart with you lesson junk on it (including last week's almanac lesson with a stack of 25 almanacs on the cart).  If you're me, then you say, "You liked that almanac lesson so much last week, I've decided to extend it!"

This is commonly referred to as making lemonade.

Now what if it's Monday afternoon and an administrator says, "You always have good ideas. We're having choice professional learning sessions TOMORROW [my emphasis] and I'm short a presenter. Could you throw something together for TOMORROW MORNING? [again, my emphasis added]." You say, "Sure, no problem!" (Probably because you are nuts.)

What would you do?  If you're me you think of the most generic librarian presentation you can (hopefully something you've seen many times) and cobble it together quickly using ideas stolen borrowed from presenters you've seen in the past.  Web 2.0 it is!  Using a pre-made Prezi template, I made this presentation which focused on Google Docs (indispensable and always more to talk about whether the audience uses it or not), Prezi itself (because PowerPoint is evil and since they're seeing it in action, it's easy to show them how to use it), and some other little fun tools.  The part on Prezi led to other creative sharing sites like Animoto and Glogster.  We also talked about Youtube's new Education site.  There were a few more.

Then I made a quick and dirty website to share the links for those interested and...Wham!  I look like I know what I'm talking about, people seem happy, and I've already had three teachers in here asking me to show them some of this stuff in more detail for certain educational applications.  And not all of the visitors were even at this morning's presentation!

Whew!

You have any examples of working on the fly like that?  I'd love to hear how you handled it.

Birthday Party Pre-Planning Craziness

Harper enjoyed her Hermione costume for Halloween so much that she has requested a Harry Potter-themed party.  My Lovely Bride loves the idea because if there's one thing she could do if she couldn't teach, it would be party planning.  And she just eats up everything Harry Potter, so I am anticipating much craziness for the next few months.

Yes, months.  Her birthday isn't until the end of March!

Now ours, I am sure, will be very cool, but try googling Harry Potter  Birthday Party.  Just...wow.  There are levels of detail and crazy in some of the things I've seen  people share about their own kids' HP birthday parties to rival the nuttiest over-the-top Bridezilla.

It should be interesting!



Some of her previous parties.

Another cute picture of her celebrating Harry Potter (before she even really knew what it was).

Cutting the Cable

So I mentioned in my last post that we cut the cable.  It's true.  We had a bundle of TV/phone/and internet.  I switched the phone to Vonage's most basic plan since we mostly use or cells anyway.  Then I took back the HD cable DVR box.

It's not like we don't watch anything.  I got a new Blu-Ray player that streams so I have Netflix streaming and Amazon Prime videos plus whatever I feel like renting from Amazon (my daughter and I watched the Muppet Christmas Carol on there for a couple bucks last weekend).

I also still get Netflix discs in the mail.  I upped our account to three-at-a-time.  I know a whole gob of folks got their panties in a twist about their price hikes and such, but I still love them.  I didn't sign up with them in the first place for the streaming and when it came for free it was nice, but not that robust.  Of course they would up the price so they could get more content.  What they probably should have done is split the companies before the price hike, then it would have made more sense to people. (But that whole "Quickster" thing was plum dumb.  Just keep "Netflix" and call the other one "Netflix Instant" or something.  Sheesh.)  I don't know what's going to happen to them now that the mail service will be slowing down.  Guess they'll definitely be pushing more for the streaming side.  Which seems to be constantly improving, by the way.  We definitely like their new "Just for Kids" area.  And no commercials!

Whatever.  We did it mostly for cost reasons but it's had the added benefit of us cutting back on television watching.  We have to actively decide to sit down an pick a show.  No more just "seeing what's on." I've also been playing more Wii with my daughter.  (She beats the snot out of me most of the time.)

And more time for reading! Many nights if we've sent discs back and there's nothing in mind to watch that night we'll just read out loud longer before the tuck-in and MLB and I will just knock off early to read.

Still pay for the cable internet, though.  Gotta have that, especially now that we're all carrying around more wi-fi devices all the time!

So now I'm on The Twitter...

...and you can follow me @library_jim.

I mentioned some of my thoughts about using this service at the GLMA blog this morning.

I think I didn't like it much the last time I tried it because I already had too many "buckets" to check. Home email, school email, feed reader, etc.  But lately I've been trimming my feed reader down to give myself more actual reading of books time and they've opened up Twitter at my school.  When I'm home I'm one of those odd ducks that likes to actually interact with their families.  But lunchtime at school?  I'd much rather see what's up on Twitter which is more like an interactive feed reader to me at this point.

Let me know of any tips you have since I've just started dipping my toe back into it.

It's not often an ad makes me cry

But this one did:




(via TED)

How the Internet Gets Inside Us

The Information: How the Internet gets inside us by Adam Gopnik at the New Yorker is one of the best and most sensible things I've read about that crazy force/source called the Internet.  He reviews all the major writers on the subject and boils them all down into an amazingly clear essay.  You may have read one or two of these and made a handful of observations about our relationship with the digital world, but Adam Gopnik, one of our best essayists, writers and thinkers, sums it all up so well that you're doing yourself a disservice if you don't read his thoughts on the subject before engaging in any further ruminations of your own.

Below are all the authors and books he mentions in the article.  It's practically a syllabus for an amazing and contentious media studies class, no?  Best of all, the article is bookended by an image of Hermione Granger in the stacks of the library at Hogwarts.  Enjoy and let me know your thoughts.

Cognitive Surplus by Clay Shirky

Is the Internet Changing the Way You Think? edited by John Brockman

The Book In the Renaissance by Andrew Pettegree

Supersizing the Mind by Andrew Clark

The Sixth Language by Robert K. Logan

The Shallows by Nicholas Carr

Hamlet's Blackberry by William Powers

Alone Together by Sherry Turkle

Too Much to Know by Ann Blair

Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television by Jerry Mander

Within the Context of No Context by George Trow

The Age of Missing Information by Bill McKibben

What Limits Do You Set?

In today's Blue Skunk posting (actually a re-posting of an earlier work), Mr. Johnson deals with the joys and frustrations of balancing his online reading (jumping from post to post and link to link) with more long form reading.

Roger Ebert has mentioned this a few times in his journal about how, due to medical problems, he spends nearly all his time online since he can no longer have much in the way of face-to-face conversations.  But he's always been a big reader and so when he wants to read he will go into a completely different room, away from the temptation of his MacBook, and read happily without distraction.

What limits do you put on "screen time" to read or just enjoy your family and not end up constantly tweeting/texting/feed reading, etc. at every possible moment?

I'm not talking about people like Ms. Yingling or Jen Robinson.  They clearly don't care for television or much in the way of online reading other than to tear their eyes away from a book long enough to blog about it.

I'm talking about people, like myself, who enjoy reading books but also like online resources, the occasional television show or movie, playing with my daughter and chatting with friends (including my best friend a/k/a My Lovely Bride).

I have even less time and inclination to surf online at school as a school librarian.  I check my feed reader every morning along with my emails and such, but mostly to just delete the chaff and keep the wheat for later consumption (sometimes to be read at lunch if I'm not too busy with other things).

Also, being a school librarian has made me want to read more kids books and you may have noticed my blogging is mostly about those right now.  So I actively try to give myself more reading time.  I've told my family that I now consider it my homework.  When my daughter is practicing piano and doing her homework and/or  MLB is grading papers I'll often read (if I'm not working on lesson plans).  And I'll purposely read kids books because I both want to increase my knowledge of them for my job and I enjoy them.  I've been reading the list of books for our district's Reader's Rally along with well-reviewed newer fiction or classics I've never gotten around to so I can be a better librarian.  I do still squeeze in an occasional gown up book, but have been spreading those out more as I concentrate on the kids stuff.

Ways I've limited my online time: I don't have a Twitter or Facebooks account.  I spend some time every few months looking at my "trends" tab on my Google feed reader and weed out some of the blogs, trying to keep my online reading manageable.  I also don't really participate in the few Nings I've joined over the years.  I only watch shows on my DVR and those that MLB and I both want to watch together.  Well, those and Mythbusters with my daughter.  That's always a blast.

I have to limit stuff both for the ADD reasons mentioned at the BLue Skunk blog but also because I'm just not as fast of a reader as pretty much every female I know.  What is it with you girls?   MLB can knock out 4 kids books in the time it takes me to read one!  But that's okay.  It's fun and I like it so I guess that's the point.  You'll make time for the things you think are important and you enjoy.  If not you'll end up like my friend Merlin Mann.  We were lit. majors in college together and he has admitted (on his 43folders blog) that if it weren't for DailyLit he probably wouldn't read any books.  He's totally into the online stuff.  Now it's certainly not making him any dumber.  He's probably at minimum a hundred times smarter than I am.  But he was such a good long form reader that I find it a little sad that he doesn't still pursue the occasional fat novel.  Although I've read a few things on DailyLit and there's absolutely nothing with spreading out something like that.  In fact, I probably don't get through four books as fast as my wife because I'm often rotating between six at a time.  If I just did one at I time I might be "better."  But that's the way I roll.  Merlin just rolls it a different way.

David Denby, in his Great Books, mentions the struggles he had going back to Columbia in his 40s to re-read "the canon" and to write the book.  As a film critic he realized it took him a few weeks to stretch his attention and patience to be able to engage properly with that kind of challenging-but-rewarding reading.  Use it or lose it, I guess.


Blue Skunk blog

Roger Ebert's Journal

Ms. Yingling Reads

Jen Robinson's Book Page

DailyLit

Online Reading Focus

Jacquie Henry and others have been talking a bit about a certain book that is pointing out things I've been saying all along.  I don't have a problem with digital tools, but I definitely think a balance needs to be struck.  Along with these discussions have come a few links to some great tools to help you focus as you read online.  I've been an avid user of Readability for some time and can highly recommend it.  I'd never heard of Instapaper until this week but it's a similar tool.

Readability takes a colorful and flashy site with all the links and ads and small type and makes it, well, readable.

Instapaper does the same thing, but ironically it's not for instant reading like Readability is.  It's for capturing something you find online to read at a later date, but with a similar clean, uncluttered format.

These posts, like Jacquie's, also point to a thought-provoking post by the author of the book, Nicholas Carr who posits that all the embedded linking online changes the way we read.  Now, he says, as we read through a typical online article or blog post, we have to make a decision every time we come to a link on whether to keep reading or to hop on over to the link.  He's not advocating losing links altogether, just putting them at the end of an article so the reader can focus on what they're reading and then check out the links at the end at  their leisure.  Laura Miller, the Salon book critic, tried out this very thing in her article of the book being so discussed.

I like this approach and believe I will adopt it from now on if you have no objections.

Check the links out for yourself, but do add Readability and Instapaper to your toolbar first, if you haven't already.  You'll be glad you did.

Jacquie Henry's wonderful post, Your Brain on Computers

Readability

Instapaper

Nicholas Carr's Experiments In Delinkification and his much-discussed book, The Shallows

Laura Miller's review of The Shallows with links at the end and an updated commentary she's written on this practice.


(image cc flickr)

Snopes Strikes Again

In this article in the NYT, "Debunkers of Fiction Sift the Net" we get another insightful look at the work of Barbara and David Mikkelson of Snopes.com (previous post) along with mentions of Factcheck.org and Politifact.com which are becoming more and more necessary as partisan sniping seems to get worse all the time with facts being the first victims.

For the Mikkelsons, the site affirms what cultural critics have bemoaned for years: the rejection of nuance and facts that run contrary to one’s point of view.

“Especially in politics, most everything has infinite shades of gray to it, but people just want things to be true or false,” Mr. Mikkelson said. “In the larger sense, it’s people wanting confirmation of their world view.”

Google Wave invite, anyone?

I still have invites for Google Wave for anyone that doesn't have one and would like.

Rob T. over at Science-Based Parenting sent me one in October and I posted my initial reactions back in November.  Then I got too busy to really do much with it.  Now I've installed notifier extensions in my browsers and am using it for a four-person group project we're doing in a grad school class.  I figured out how to embed a Google Doc in the wave we're working on as well, so now all our chat, notes, and the draft are all in one place.  Nice.


I haven't had much time to look for public waves.  I connected with one or two random librarian/kidlit waves, but am clearly missing out on the good stuff.  That's ok.  I need to keep my head down and plough through the next couple of weeks and finish up.  I'll worry about making more connections after I'm graduated and can maybe maybe possibly find a librarian job out there.

Let me know in the comments if you'd like an invite and I'll send it off!

Rumor Has It

David and Barbara Mikkelson of Snopes.com fame are profiled on NPR, so there's a perfect Critical Thinking bit of brain candy for you.

Can you believe these two people, by themselves, have been battling the forces of internet nonsense since 1995?

I've posted about them before, but there was a time when I relied heavily on their site to cut back on forwarded emails both at home and at school. Especially at school.

We almost never have the forwarded email problem at work anymore. I'd like to think that I helped by always going to Snopes, then replying all with the facts. It did work because after a while people started just sending the crap to me only and asking if it was true. Like I was the only one able to type in "Snopes.com" or something. Kind reminds me of "Let Me Google That For You."

So, yeah, I'd like to think everyone is now completely enlightened and checks it themselves, but I suspect this kind of hoo-ha is going through different channels I tend to ignore (Facebook, Twitter, etc.).

Much of the stuff they get is political in nature, usually bashing politicos from both sides of the aisle. But their forte is urban legends and internet rumors, mostly the kind that fill up your inbox. Another great online site for this kind of stuff is FactCheck.org, which is a non-partisan group dedicated to fact-checking political speech and journalism. For obvious reasons, they are very busy indeed.

Critical Thinking Sunday: Consumer Protection!

Jeff Wagg, Communications Manager for the JREF, is an incredibly engaging guy and did a fun presentation at last year's science and skeptical track of Dragon*Con. He asked the audience what they thought the number one skeptical publication was.

Consumer Reports, baby! When people question the idea of skepticism and critical thinking, you can usually win them over by talking about consumer protection. Nobody likes to be scammed. How better to know what you're getting than to rely on the unbiased reviews of products scientifically tested by the Consumers Union? These guys are the best. I'm not saying that all of their reviews are perfect. Sometimes it's hard to know what and how to test certain things. I don't usually buy what they have to say about digital cameras for instance. But for overall filtering of the wheat from the chaff, Consumer Reports is a great place to start.

While not as comprehensive in scope, I do like ConsumerSearch as well. They're similar to the review aggregator I mentioned last week, metacritic. They scour reviews from all over (including Consumer Reports) and come up with the highest rated products in various categories. Always a good first place to look before buying.

For the geeky tech stuff, I personally tend to lean toward Cnet. But their reviews are also included in ConsumerSearch and unless you like going down the technical spec rabbit hole (and can steel yourself against their "must-have" attitude), then you're probably better off sticking with ConsumerSearch and Consumer Reports.

Don't buy blind. Spend a few minutes benefiting from the advice of the experts.

Amazon V. Macmillan Fail

Amazon v Macmillan: Free Market Fail by Scott Westerfeld explains the whole debacle succinctly.

I like this bit:

This is not a case of two corporations pissing down on us mere mortals with equal disdain; it's a case of complex negotiations in an ancient industry with many arcane traditions that's in a state of technological flux. And suddenly, out of the blue, one of the sides in this negotiation spat their pacifier across the room in a very public and embarrassing display of petulance. And that corporation was Amazon.

Great New Books (& some editorializing)

Theodore Gray has a great website for his new book about The Elements as well as the wonderful video above. I keep hearing differing opinions about these kind of book trailer and their effectiveness at, you know, actually selling books but there's no doubt that when this clever they will invariably get passed around on the intertubes and be seem by more people than might have been the case with traditional marketing.

Of course I heard about this video from the estimable Jacquie Henry at her blog Wanderings, but she gave the credit to that large behemoth online bookseller of large South American river proportions. It's funny because that bookseller had nothing to do with it other than allowing it to be posted on their site. But I thank her for the heads up on a fun video.

Before reading Ms. Henry's post, I had come across two references to what looks to be another amazing popular science book. It's called The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot. The first reference was in Seed Magazine's always great Books to Read Now column (which I can read now, but the books take me more time). Then there was a brilliant and thoughtful appreciation of not only the book but what the writer put into it and the changing face of book marketing by one of my favorite science writers and bloggers, Carl Zimmer.

Funny thing was, Carl parenthetically mentioned that Amazon was on his "blacklist at the moment" because of what he calls their "book-disappearing act." He's talking about this whole dustup the bookseller (why do I keep referring to them as that? They hardly sell just books. They're practically they're own online mall.) had with Macmillan which was horrible to behold as a former bookseller myself a a friend to many authors. John Scalzi has an excellent rant on this if you want to know the outrage felt by many authors burned by this ham-handed corporate maneuvering. Here's more from the BBC. Google it. It was big news if you care about publishing at all.

So yes, praise to some excellent authors and their books. Interesting thoughts now to ponder about the changes our digital culture brings to the publishing industry. But Amazon? Meh.

CARE Update

I'm taking the CARE logo off the sidebar, but there's obviously still work to be done in Haiti. There will be for the foreseeable future. That's one on the reasons I chose CARE. They will be there fighting poverty long after the eyes of the world have moved on to other issues in other parts of the world.

My Lovely Bride ran the collection drive at her school and has raised nearly three thousand dollars for Haiti. We're not doing too shabby at my school either, but nothing like that!

Money for Haiti is no longer the immediate problem. Now it's a matter of international and local will and continued rebuilding and support. I hope this time Haiti can not only recover, but overcome. Remember, this is more a crisis of poverty than anything else and be sure to continue to make your donations unrestricted. Thanks.

Haiti Is a Crisis of Poverty

Yes, the earthquake was bad, but we had a similar size quake hit L.A. more 16 years ago and only 72 people died. That's because we have the money and expertise to build right. I'll never complain about a boring zoning meeting again.

The cure for Haiti, after the immediate disaster relief, is to begin to alleviate their poverty and to somehow help them to strengthen their own government. They need building codes and zoning laws and infrastructure. Maybe they can't; I don't know.

But right now they need help. Desperately. CARE was already on the ground in Haiti and has continuing updates on their blog. They're a strong organization based here out of Atlanta. My wife is spearheading the collection efforts hat her school with the proceeds going to CARE as well.

Other organizations are great for different reasons--particularly immediate catastrophe relief. But who will be there 6 weeks, 6 months, 6 years from now? Care.

Sick Day Roundup

50 Best Books for Boys and Young Men
Here's a pretty great list. I hadn't heard of this site before and will definitely keep it on mind. Is it up there with Guys Read? Only further investigation will tell...

Like online tools? You gotta check out some of the amazing upgrades from Acrobat.com. I've already mentioned my love for the clean look and design of their Buzzword word processor. Now, along with their document storage and meeting site, they've added a presentation tool, and a pretty great spreadsheet creator called Adobe Tables. Give it a look.

Inspired
from Doug Noon's Boderland blog. He's always keeping me inspired. My daughter sat on my lap and we were both shouting with fear and delight at that kid's amazing bike tricks. Inspiring indeed!

New Agers and Creationists Should Not Be President
from the ever more wonderful Roger Ebert. Hear, hear I say! Critical thinking in the mainstream media? Let's hope...

Roundup of Awesome Stuff

My Wonderful World is a fantastic site put out by National Geographic to give us parents and teachers better geography resources. Pass it on.

The Book Whisperer has a post on a great use on a Ning in a classroom. Ironically, Ning.com is blocked in my district. Oh, well. Maybe you can try it.

Awful Library Books was on TV recently and now I have another fun blog to follow.

I also just discovered The Moth podcast. Perfect for my commute. Now I have another podcast I can't get enough of!

Catch the Wave?

This was written for the Georgia Library Media Association.

Empowering Learners encourages us to become early adopters of digital sources of information to better serve our stakeholders. I’ve never considered myself a “tech” person but have always liked to stay relatively current and aware of the exciting and ever-changing digital landscape. I blog, I wiki, I can hold my own in a discussion of cloud computing or mashups or whatever. But I’ve never considered myself an early adopter. I didn’t get a DVD player until the price came down and it was easier to rent a DVD than a VHS. I didn’t get a Gmail until 2005. My blog archive only goes back to 2007. I was a late adopter (and early abandoner) of Twitter.

But now I feel all special and “early adopter”-ish with my invitation to Google’s new digital platform, Wave.

I know, I know, some of you are saying “Huh? What’s that?” and a few might be saying, “I want in!”

Well, for those who don’t know I’ll explain a bit about it and what I think it’s going to be good for, but for those desperate others, don’t get too excited just yet.

Google Wave is in “preview” mode which is even earlier than “beta.” They say it’s their idea of what email would be like if someone were to invent email now rather than 40 years ago. It’s part email, part chat, part wiki.

There’s good and there’s bad.

The bad is that if you get an invite you may sign in and find there’s nobody else in your contact list available to “wave” with you and it can seem like a big lonely place. I’m sure that’ll be corrected as soon as they’ve tweaked it and are ready to roll it out to the public. But there are ways to get into the water, as it were, and soon enough you’ll find yourself figuring things out.

The other drawback to instant domination is that it’s not as immediately intuitive as, say, blogging or most social networking sites. With those you sign up, create a profile, and you’re off. With Wave, you would do well to read something like this which can give you the what’s what on the best way to get around. Yes, that’s an online book that will probably be updated constantly as the bugs in the system are worked out. But unlike most other platforms, Wave isn’t strictly chronological, so it takes a bit of a different mindset than a straightforward up and down list of posts or emails. At it’s best, it’s the best parts of the powerful collaboration tools you’ve been using online. At worst, it’s the worst parts of online chat and discussion forums.

So if you’re still reading, you’re probably asking what’s the good and why should teacher-librarians care?

The good is that when you get it going for you, you realize that this will be a fantastic collaborative tool on many levels and that’s what we are all about. It will blow some current tools out of the water.

When you open it up, it looks kinda like an email platform. You have an inbox and folders. You have contacts. You can use it like email, click on one of your contacts, type a message and send it. They can respond. But instead of separate emails, this “wave” can go on and on as long as you like. And if your friend is online at the same time you are it’s like instant chat. And I do mean instant because you can see each other type and edit live. No more “X is typing” messages as you listen to the clock tick. But it gets better because you can start a wave with one person and start collaborating on, say, a document. Then you can add another contact and they instantly have access to the entire wave and can immediately collaborate. So now it’s like email and/or chat and/or online document collaboration and/or a wiki all at the same time.

You think back-channeling at the AASL conference was cool with Twitter? Just wait until you have the ability to do a wave instead. I don’t have a Twitter account, but I wanted to see what I’d missed so I went there and did a search on #aasl2009 and scrolled through pages and pages of interesting but incredibly repetitive tweets and retweets. With wave a presenter could throw up a wave, and you could all collaborate, take notes, comment on and edit the entire thing live. As it’s happening. And keep it for future use or collaboration. No, really. Check out this post for more on that.

But that scenario won’t happen until Google Wave is out of Preview and at least up to Beta. So don’t rush into it yet unless you don’t mind a little mess and confusion. But do keep it on your radar so when it comes to you, you can be ready to catch the Wave.

Distraction Devices?

Doug Johnson would like to know: "How do we deal with the distractive qualities of technology in schools?" Go to his post and answer him if you've got a good one. I'm sure it depends on if it's elementary, middle, high, or college and beyond. Different ages and technologies would lend themselves to different distractions. I've noticed this is true even without technology.

There's also the worry that the internet and all this texting and chatting and tweeting are all cutting us off from the real live, face to face people and groups in front of us. We're old to "get a first life."

But check out this great nine minute video from TED talks. It's sociologist Stephana Broadbent on how technology actually enables intimacy rather than putting us in our own little bubbles.

Now I know this isn't the same as the school distraction issue, but I think if we were a bit more open to allowing the technological chips fall where they may, we might find it's not as bad as we think it will be. I'm sure there are students using their cellphones to buy or sell drugs or whatever. however, I don't think banning cellphones is the answer. Maybe banning that kid's cell phone. But I'm also sure s/he is clever enough to use another. You may be shocked to know that I was aware of the occasional drug purchase at my own high school back in the days before cell phones and pagers. It didn't seem to be a problem to the truly motivated.

Going to graduate school for me (this time around) has been an interesting experience. This is the first time I've sat through classes in which everyone had their laptops out. Some professors apparently ban this practice. But tell me, if everyone in the class has no laptop or cell or anything other than a paper and a pencil to take notes with, how can you tell they're still not tuning you out? I know I did. I don't need a laptop with twenty-eight tabs open on my browser to zone out when you start to drone on.

It's not a competition either. I hear that one a lot too. "We have to compete with_____" (video games, texting, social networks, etc.) No. Like Ms. Broadbent points out., most of the people are probably going to quickly check on someone in their immediate circle and get back to the business of class. Like I said, this is new to me as well. I was surprised to see someone in one of my classes checking the score of a college ballgame during class last year. Then I thought, hey, s/he's more likely to pay attention now that that itch of curiosity has been scratched.

What do you think?

(image cc wikimedia)