I asked my students to turn in their cell phones and write about it

I don&#x27;t understand why he decided to do his experiment after the students told him it was because they didn&#x27;t understand the words in the book.<p>But anyway, I think some of this is true that things like social media have gone to far in attracting our attention. But also a lot of blame is with the structure of education. Listening to one person for at least an hour with sometimes a hundred other people in the room is not a good way of learning, at least not for everyone.<p>Also learning to remember to complete a closed book exam is not a useful skill anymore. One of the good things about phones is that almost any information can be found almost instantly almost anywhere. No need to remember formulas or dates. Instead how to find information, verify it, and use it is far more important.

The author is best known for complaining about modern education and having a low opinion of his students. The fact that he would respond to students not understanding the book he assigned by telling them their phones are the problem is unsurprising.<p>Here is a pretty good summary of his MO which apparently hasn&#x27;t changed much since a few years ago. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hookandeye.ca&#x2F;2016&#x2F;03&#x2F;23&#x2F;the-unbearable-privilege-of-cynicism&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hookandeye.ca&#x2F;2016&#x2F;03&#x2F;23&#x2F;the-unbearable-privilege-of...</a>

While I take a lot of issues with the article itself, I concur the core message completely due to having done the experiment myself.<p>Two months ago I gave up my phone for a week, for a class on ethics along with a single other student.<p>Not being able to listen to podcasts, audiobooks, and music everywhere I go, I fell into so many more conversations than I normally would in a week.<p>what I realized was that, while I didn&#x27;t feel addicted to my phone I definitely was missing out on a lot of unique interactions by wearing headphones everywhere I went.

My experience with education is that you are <i>often</i> forced to write in order &quot;to please&quot; the teacher, rather than express yourself (if you want the proper degree). So personally I do not really believe in any of those numbers.<p>Edit: At least not on academic level, there I think it looks bit differently.

Having foregone nearly all packaged food and all flying for about five years, I can report similar results -- discovering that what was supposed to be more convenient, bringing the world closer, connecting me to family, and exposing me to more culture did the opposite.<p>Next to nobody I&#x27;ve shared my experiences with considers going without packaged food and flying possible, let alone my results, but experience speaks louder than their speculation.

Seems about right. I did a self test on myself, leaving phone at home for the work whole week. No other restrictions, this worked great. It had the benefit of still using phone whenever I needed it, not missing interaction but having much more concentration while doing work related tasks and forced reasonable amount of self reflection time while in transit.<p>For permanent basis I would request work dumb-phone from employer, that will stay on my office desk.<p>Other than that, a lot of anxety related to phone got removed once the phone is on permanent silent, all unknown numbers are blocked silently, notifications are limited. Phone is for people who I want to interact when I can.<p>FOMO

Story has holes in it. They agreed to part for 9 days, yet after only two weeks they began to think phones are limiting their relationships.

If most of the students did bad in the exam, the problem lies with the one factor in common: the professor.

Did I miss the part where he says what their grades were after this experiment? Without any specific improvements it is just someone complaining about kids these days.

It&#x27;s a simple pattern.<p>1. Offer extra credit for some wacky experiments with students<p>2. Make it clear to the experimental subjects what results you want to hear in advance<p>3. Complete the experiment without any rigour (blinding) and hear the results you wanted to hear<p>It&#x27;s not at all surprising to me that a group of students sucking up to a professor for extra credit would say just what they thought the professor wanted to hear, whether they believed it or not.

Forget about giving up smartphones, would it be even possible to teach ourselves some notification etiquette[1] e.g. while sending a chat text setting the priority level for it i.e. if cat gif (delayed) and if something important (immediate) etc.<p>I think the app behemoths which gained from the notification pollution would never implement anything which forces etiquette to the user and that the well-being measures launched in Android and iOS are useless when it comes to limiting smartphone usage.<p>[1]<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;needgap.com&#x2F;problems&#x2F;59-notification-pollution-mobile-productivity" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;needgap.com&#x2F;problems&#x2F;59-notification-pollution-mobil...</a>

Remember the old days when a bunch of friends would agree to meet at any place and all of us would find each other after arriving at that place. Wonder if that would be possible today?

As I read this excellent article my dog sitting beside me looked up at me several times to say &quot;hey human, quit staring at that screen!&quot;

Yes, cell phones or gadgets are making people isolated instead of making them more social. Keeping gadgets away from us will make us more creative and perform batter. Would like to experiment with me as well.

Wow. Really, really bold leadership here. He actually asked students to go without their phones ... the student&#x27;s family were happy the teacher didn&#x27;t ask for them too. Such power!<p>Meanwhile, a university professor,<p>- isn&#x27;t mom&#x2F;dad by pseudo punishing students removing phones<p>- isn&#x27;t moonlighting as pseudo pysch researcher who guessed phones were the problem<p>- isn&#x27;t a cool guru by wowing kids into wisdom with this unexpected ploy<p>If your students did bad on their exam<p>- make improvements as a teacher if you feel some responsibility lay with you (there&#x27;s no need to gas on about this to students)<p>- leave the grades unchanged<p>- stop confusing the issue with stupid exercises then self marketing it into media