[bachmeier]

> But I believe that most people don't know how to handle today's distractions, and it takes a toll on their productivity.

When I'm teaching, I'd love to bring a hammer and smash phones students check them. They're doing it as a way to avoid thinking, as a way to always have someone entertain them. They're addicted and don't know it.

> I'd argue that for the most part ActiveBoards resulted in a big productivity loss in schools.

We don't use them here, but not that long ago, "dedicated" teachers used PowerPoint. I've visited universities where they'd put faculty in classrooms where the only way to "teach" was to use PowerPoint. No amount of technology changes the fact that you have to communicate.

[falcolas]

Eh, before powerpoint, there were printed overhead transparencies. Before transparencies, there were teachers who spent their entire lecture writing directly from notes to the blackboard.

Rote teachers are rote teachers.

[gkya]

I LOVED transparencies. The teacher brought it to the classroom if was not already there, and plugged it in. And there you have the presentation. Sit and wait while a humanities professor is dabbling with the computer corpse installed in the classroom and the projector that projects nearly a diamond shaped image onto a random place on the wall, until they just give up after some dozen of minutes. Or they set up edmodo and send you PPTXs instead of proper notes, and you need to watch stupid animations until you can get to see that 64th page with the paragraph you need to read, hopefully not coloured stupidly or not illegible in another way due to an incompatibility with the thing on the phone that renders those files, so that you don't have to wait until you go back home to look at the thing on the computer.

[e12e]

I believe the only useful think we can teach is how to learn (because you can't teach people, you can only motivate to learn - they need to do the work themselves).

So regardless of your setting (kindergarden through university) - demonstrating good ways to study is worthwhile.

Demanding a classroom free of smartphones / social media is one very basic step in that direction.

You might be the first person to help a student realize that they are still smarter than their smart phone - and that they are in control, not it.