reflecting on his life and political career. interviewed by washington post columnist michelle and elizabeth alexander. barack obama tonight the on c-span2. ♪ >> you are watching tv on c-span2 every weekend with nonfiction books and help us. c-span2, created by america's cable television company is a public service and brought to you today for your television better. >> good morning. welcome to this technology conference. posted the university of st. louis. academic innovation.

a two day conference will it's gratifying to see a record number of colleagues across the region taking advantage of this. for the first time ever, it over 1200 registrations. welcome to new attendees and remote viewers tuned in today be a zoom or c-span. where thrilled to reach so many coeagues wherever you might be. it took whole team to get us here, 17 campuses and expense of a logical conclusion. time and energy will nmally be recognized but it's not possible this year unless you want to do it from home. as we helping various capacities

a moment she check this out. i'd like to take a moment to recognize the enormous efforts taken by our assistant director and director of instructional design reading this year's conference. look at these amazing women, they are talented and creative. i am overcome with pride and i get to work with them. it is incredible to see them in the conference would like to personally thank the support st. louis' leadership place a high value on teaching and learning in our university. without this support will consistently do. welcome our speaker.

>> good morning and thank you. thank you c-span for broadcasting this important conference. i hope everyone is doing well this morning and staying healthy and safe. it is my privilege to welcome you to the university of missouri st. louis on a beautiful and exciting day. i would have loved to welcome you to a beautiful campus in the st. louis region in prison. our region is rich with history and institutions of higher education, all with creative faculties, staff and students. we make the region as long as it is together. it's my understanding this is the 19th and will focus on teaching technology conference. that is remarkable. conferences like this one where we can exchange ideas, learn together and network are how we maintain responses in the region.

during unprecedented times, teaching with technology certainly help us continue to keep students engaged and on track for graduation and will know that's not been easy. even under all times sharing ideas and strategies through venues like this one make this job a little lighter. thanks to all of you for devoting these two days to think about how to use technology to improve student learning, teaching and research. it's my pleasure to welcome you to our keynote speakers, doctor jen, professor of english and director of the center for teaching in massachusetts. author of several books, the most recent of which are small teaching everyday lessons from learning and teaching distracted mind. i'm sure we will all agree that our mind little more distracted these days. more details about her background so without further

delay, join me in giving a warm welcome for today's keynote address teaching distracted mi mind. thank you. >> thank you, everybody. um, i am grateful for your presence. i would have loved to haveeen there with you all. i know how diffilt it is to st focused on webinarsoom meetings over the course of a couple of days. i was listening to my wife trying to do this with her ndergarten class and i'll count this as success if nobody raises their hand and asked to show me there cap. imagine when you have potential with your student, imagine my

wife trying to get 5-year-old tuesday on focus on his resume. i'd like to be able to start our session today by talking a little bit about thinking philosophically about what is why attention is important and why we want to be able to make value in our teaching so that's what i want to look at the bigger picre in terms of attention. what i want touggest is we should think about the idea that in some ways,ttention is a fundamental part of what we do. thecology of attention reviewg the is the art of directing the attention. the essential task o teaching, noticinghat's remarkable and

important and wha we are looking at. i eourage you to think about that, the extent to wch your disciplineas a potential terrain, your job as a teacher is to identify what's most importan and direct the attention of your students wh that kenton and those skills. we think about attention as being fundamental in terms of how we see ourselves and our fuamental work to direct the attention of the students what matters. how we learn, what he argues here, i'll argues well that we should pay more attenti to attention if students are getting the correct information

or in terms of skis and content that we are trying, it's unlikely they will learn anhing our greatest challenge is channeling and capturing t attention of our students. not going to get into the cognitive theory but one thing we know, the research on how to arn, it starts with attention. do not pay attention to whatever it is they are trying to master, they're not going to get to the latest steps of learning. attention is a fundamental part of the learning process it is the first part of the learng process by argue thi value we have to make, it is delerate in oureaching and we have to thinkery carefully how we cuivate and sustain the attention of our students it's

true especially now when they are dealing with our deves, got the global pandemic around us personal and professional challenges. when we get back into our classrooms next year hefully, we need to think about how we cultivate and sustain the attentionf our students. just noticing also that not only is it our challen capturing and sustaini student attention for the challenge is made difficult by the fact that attention is limited resource. we will experienced this on our zoom calls andveryday lives paying attention to this and not paying attention to that, the fact that attention is achieved over time and it's more

difficult in certainontexts. we will have this experience on a regular everyday basis. want to think about oursees ouelves, a psychologist from northern arizona univeity, we are the stewards of our students attention. she argues here, attention is the foundation for every one of you as instructors but w are seeing the cognitive system is a preciousesource so since we are the designers of learning, weeed to think about ourselves as stewardsf the attention of our students. what kind of stewardship are we offering to our students? what are we doing to support the attention of our students in the classroom? prior to the pandemic,he biggest question i got when i spoke to people about attention and distraction, which i do about theevices in our room? it gets pushed asi in our current context but the question

is always, kind of stewardship are we offering to our students? just sangut your devices away,tudents can't pay attention anymore? are wectually trying to take a proactive stae saying i am here to help support you in your efforts to pay attention? i want to be a partner with you thinking about how we do that together and that's part of what i will argue here and what i argue in the book as well. i'd like to begin conversations about attention and distraction about giving some historical context. there's a lot of concern about the extent to which our devices are slowly degrading our ability to pay attention and making us into creatures that can no longer pay attention because we are so used to constant stimulation of our phones and other devices so think it's worth stepping back a little bit of historical context on the and

help us think more carefully about the solutions to make attention a stronger value in our teaching. we can go back aong way to aristotle who writes the people who are passionately deved are unable to pay aention and say they enjoy more than the activity that presently occupies them. listening to arguments as being in your classroom, playing youte videos on your phone. we can seeoing back as far as have, people writing about the mind, i goes back earlier th aristotle, people we expressing concern about our ability to stay focused, especially on sometng cognitively challenging listening to and following along d argue with external

temptations about things that are more pleasant, easier for us, we tendo default to those things. step away from the challenging things and go t the easier or more pleasant things so w can see ancient writers writingbout thi, our inability to pay attention when we want to. we have a desire to listen to the argumes, we know is goi to be helpful in some ways and still somehow, can't ignore what's playing off in the distance. the poet wrote about the extent to wch he found attention difficult i his prayers. he throws himself down in his chamber to pray, put myself in th position, i invite god and his angels to come and when they

arrived, the lining of the door, two parts. identify thewo ways in which we are specifically distracted. one is the extnal part, but there is aecond part whichs things tha come inside my head. the memory ofesterday's pleasures. a few of tomorw's dangerous. what you will see here, we are noticing two kinds of things that distract us, things that are outside and inside our own heads. we pbably noticed during the pandemic, all of the distraction has been inside our own head thinking about global issues and peonal and professional challenges, it' making it more difficult for us to stay focuse i love this one is an emple of

how we start to worry about technological proteions that arise. this is a cartoon fro the magazine punch from 1906 and was going to hpen in 1907, you have natalie, they're looking at the telegraph machines and therefore not payg attention. thinkbout the relationship of teenagers huddled over a restaurant table, we don't talk to eac other anymore, we are not medicating with one anoer so is anoth concern we have that goes back a very long way. just to note, this is two parts. this first part is the biology part.

going t take qstions so have questions along the way o comments, moderators will come in and respond to some about. the second half will be t same thing. we will discuss this so this will be about the webinar. we see thi new limit with the exrnal distractions whatever it might be the technologies drawing our attention to that. my favorite quote is from a novel called a lady in london, series of novels about a woman

is dling with all of the challenges o household management while trying to start a literary career. as a lady in london wring about attending a literary coerence for the first time and she says i'm sorry to see attention wandering to an entirely unrelated topic. fficulty in procuring this, she sort of doubled down on her attention and tries to stay focused by taking note and then later, finding her local bankers in case she runs outf money. if you fee distracted at any time, just know that you are n alone in that. she shares your pain. want to get now to wrapping up th initial historical overvie by showing you this before and

after well in terms of the way our contemporary technogies have affected the way we think about technoly and distraction distraction. 1741, a book called improvement of the mind. one thing she writes about is thextent to wch if you put yourself in the company of distraction, it makes you a more distractle person. what's argued he is people going to coffee shops, coffee shops were in england a europe more generally and these were tightened activities, people talking, meetings and all kinds of stuff. don't go to those places if you're trying to study because all the things that strike your eye all the tendenc to peel the mind away fm the pursuit of

any subject to the normal discusons in this so this is mething a little different and thereby you get into thi habit and you spend a lot of time in diraction, you become a more distracted personnce you see the argument in the 18th century, this gives us context with arguments made in 2010, you see nichol arguing that what the intnet has done for our ability to pay attention, distctibility, focus, undistracted on the linear mind pushed aside by new kind of mind with this overlapping of the faster the better. you canee the extent to whi

that conce is a very ancient one. the ea that somehow our new technologies are fundamentally changing u becomes less plausible when we see the extent to which these concerns we have thes concerns for a very long time now. the other thing i hope you've seen, never fully had a bk in your mind. that is not the way the mind rks. the ideahat there was this relapse in which we have focused on this that is kind of a myth. he never really had a mind like that want you to think aut this knowledge going forward, mans have distractible minds so the idea of teaching distracted mind conveying the fact that all of our minds are

distracted so as a result, we need to think carefully about distracted mind. one striking things about historical quotes in the book has more of this with a variety of cultures and time periods in one striking thing you'll notice is that they are limits. we are unhappy about the fact that our minds are easily distracted. we seem to mind better able to pay attention and engage in long periods of sustained focus so whene talk about distractibility, we seem to be unhappy about it that is an interesting thing to notice about our minds, should make u wonder, why do we have distractible minds? why did we evolve like this minds that we wish were different parts we wish we had the ability to persuade distractions and walk in and focus? i want to spend a few minutes

talking about that, why we have diractible minds. one nice description comes from psychiatrist, this com from an imated video lecture given, if you google it, you can see it. as an example here of a bird trying to pick seed against a difficult background and the bird has to have two different forms of attention. ce to be able to focuso pick up the seed against that background and at the same time, it has to be are of its surroundings because it's got to be aware of potential predators and other birds aroundt has to be a general awaress of its surroundings we need to be able

to focus but also be aware of what is gng on arounds to be alert of friends, enemies, dangerous, not really he predators coming at us the same way birds do but think about the way in which we evolved. th evolutionary process, it was important for us to not only be able to attract an animal or start a fire but the of potential dangers as well as positive this. ne sources and social gups. so there is good reason we he developed this ability to focus as well as the capacity awareness and be easily distracted and it might actually be helpful to us. the stking thing about other

animals as well as the extento which the divided ality to focus is intensified by the ft that we, especially primates are drawn toward novel. in a disacted mind, one might favorite books about the issue of destrtion in a more general way, they argue we are formation research shows that in addition to working for food, our brain is sort of evolved to finding information and continue serious about infmation. it was used today i'm doing this but i wonder what is going on over there. maybe try something different, something dferent will happen. the contiing push on ourselves

to ask questions and look for nolty ask ourselves queions and wonder and go down rabbit holes in pathways that might lead to something unexpected that's ultimatel helpful to us so what has happened recently and this is, i want to show y the first part so you know distraction is an ancie problem but also don'tant to downplay the fact that our technologies are getting better and better in these aspects of our minds. what we have now that we are dealg with is our phones, they've been carefully designed to appeal to o design of nolty. just think about what your phone es for you in terms of dividing you wit novel formation. it is always avaable to give you something new when you are

loing for something n so you can check your e-mail to see what your e-mails are, okay, i done with that for now you can help to twier and there's bound to be something n on twitter. when twitter is tapped out you can go to instagram and see what's new there. by the time you're de with that, you probably have more e-mails so if you're looking, perfectly designed machine to provide you with that. not only that but y should consider the fact that this is a mini billion-dollar industry to capture your attention to these devices so there's lot of time and energy iested in trying to ensure that these dices capture and keep you attention so the difference is today, the chines have gone better at playing on the aspects of our minds that have always been the. companies are getting better as

they put time and energy into it. the question then becomes, have you gotten so good at it, i am no longer able to pay attention, students are no longer able to pay attention, somehow these devices are rewiring our minds one of my favorite psychologists at the university of virginia and willingham, suggests that we probably shouldtep back because of the fact that attention is central to our ability to think that imagine if somehow inhe course of a few yearst's undergone a significant deterioration that would require all kinds of fittings other cognitive

functions d that reorganization of our brains, at a spies level will happen over and evolutionary tim not just because we started playing with our smart phones. we can change our brains in an acute way, short periods of time but theeep rewiring hear people talking about that you may be concerned about for yourself the they seem to be good evidence that is happening at those architectural doubles of our brain so to me, that is great news. what it tells us is that o brains are still there as they always he been, they are distractible because they've always been distractible but they are also able to pay attention in the circumstances are right and we put the effort into it is past.

the range of your students are still there available for attention policy this leads me to the idea that if we want the attention of our students, we have to tnk about how we are deliberatel cultivating it. if there's one thing i want y to take away from this todays what you see on the screen he. you need to start thinking about attention as an achvement. it is, i think sometimes we think about attention is what we call away from her to suggest and what i tnk the research suggests, are normal state's destruction. thoughts swirling arod in our heads, maybe thinking about one thing and mbe something else at the same time and when we are able to rise out of that and pay attention, that isn achievement. they're able to do, nothat we

effortlessly, multiple steps are neededo ensure that if we pay attention and faith but i lik this concept that attention is an achievement and if attention is achievement, that means we need to think of how are we helping studes achieve it? what are we doing to sport eir attention over the course of the learning experience that is our goal about, that is what i want to do for the second half of this session, think about the strategies they are using equity the support attention that might push students away in his direction. let's revi the first principles. then, remembe the human mind is an easily distractible mind. there's a chapter in the book that goes to this local examples, i showed you if you

already are doing the research in the book and reading as i normally read novels, philosophy and criticism and that sort of thing and i started to notice when people talk about attention and discussion, youee it everywhere and as far backs you can read. our current technologies are intensifying a pre-existing condition to these two things represent what i view is the right historical attitude. we've always been distracted but we are facing special new challenges because of the fact that our currentechnologies are so good about playing on our distractible majors. so that is the two halves o that equation. attention is hard-won and fragile hievement. i think there are two things

about that. first of a, in a classroom setting, we have to win the attention of our students, we have to do things to draw them into the experience but also it's fragile. it is easy to fall away from it so we have to think about what we are doing over the course of the class perd. last, thiseads us into the second half, if attention matters to learning, there's a good argument with think about cognitive lirature. we have to make this valuable in our teaching. i know you probably think about all of these other things we need to think about and i suggest that if you, you can ew all of those thing through the lens of attention. one of the thingse've been talking about recently, the importance of community in the classroom is facing facing special challenges, many of us

are teacng only online classes classes. when havingormal opportunities to cultivate communiti in our classrooms like we do in face-to-face classroomsou can think about this through the le of attention as well. a classroom cmunity, one thing we can do for one another pay attention to each other. i pay attenon to you and listen to as an iividual. i give you the gift of my attention and i hope you do the same thing for me so if we think about community, attention can an avenue for creative thinking about how we are in the classroom. how are weakening our attention to one another? how are we ensuring when a student speaks, other students areetting that student attention? a lot of the challenges and problems we face in higher education, i think can be viewed through the lensf attentiont

can be creative about solutions for long-staing challenges we face education will. usually when i get this talk about attention as i was working on the book, the issuehat people want to talk about is devices in the cssroom what i do about these in the classroom? obviously that's ls of an issue right now because we are talking to our devices so i won't talk about that as much today but will say one thing. the extent to which your student and partners in helpingou think about how to support and sustain attention in yr classroom. the udents are in three to five other classes, the have lots of other classes your upper class students, for been in

five, 15, 20 or 30lassroom environments in which the teachers have different policies about devices a attention in which teachers use strategies t support and sustain their attention so in other words, they have a wealth of experience in ter of solions about how to cultivate and sustain their attention. they have resume sessions all the time now in webinars like this one. driving them away? what is t moment in which they turn away from the screen and turn to the bon ask them these questions and see what solutions they might offer that would best help them sustain their attention for whatever it is you're asking them to do. we are near the end of september

here, it's a greatime month they've had three orour weeks and their teachers doing different things, ask what has helped and wt hasn't helped them. if the other classes they have had high school and college expenses, what kinds ofdeas they might offer you i terms of what you might be doing i the classroom. if y normally do an evaluation for midterms, that is a great time to ask these questions. i did this with my o students prior to the pandemic. last year, asking them to help give solutions for wha would ma them, what i could do to help support their attention in the classroom. they gave me several ideas abo things that i would never have

thought about. things i've seen my colleagues doing. so consider what you can learn from yr students about supporting their attention and also about your own experiences, when do y fade away? what can you learn from that wi your own sdents? turned the ls of attention to yourself. think about your own distractions when you get distracted andhat draws you back in to a session like this one. speaking of which, i want to pause n and see what potential questions might have come up here about the first hf of this presentation. jen, i don't know if there is anything we should address if you want me to respond to anything particular. >> we just have a couple of questions in the chat. the first one is about people

with adhd or add and some of the struggles with that. one of our attendees mentioned it's kind of like continuously being in a coffee shop even in a quiet and isolated room. >> coffee shop anxiety. as part of my research is on, i look at the literature, attention deficit disorders or adhd and essentially what i get in that, the solutions that help us pay attention, anyone pays attention, can help those students. it is of course more challenging for them but the basic principles and pathways, one of the things i recommend in the book for example, in a face to

face classroom this particular semester, one of the things in the book i talked about is the idea of there is this invisible plane in the classroom. i'm in the section and many teachers do not cross the invisible area. i did a lot of observing of teachers i can't tell you how many teachers i saw that have a little empty space. one of the things in the face-to-face classroom, pay better attention to your students, get out there and walk around, address individual students in different corners of the room. one thing that got me thinking about that, my wife is a

kindergarten teacher and when she has students coming in they have attention problems in their individual plan, the first recommendations for get his that student should sit near the teacher. the physical presence of the teacher helps support the attention of a student and i think we can start their, it is specifically designed to students but we can generalize what can help everyone. if we were in a conference room right now, all of us together, i'd be standing right next to one of right now in the present next to me would be very attentive. as we move around that room, make sure that everybody where i am speaking directly to the area. you see that with actors, they speak to different areas of the

audiences. what i will argue for is what will support attention for those students even though it will be more challenging. >> i'm jumping out of order because it ties to what you're saying. there's a question about standing up versus sitting down when lecturing. >> in face-to-face or like this? >> either. ey said are you standing up now while speaking is today while most of us are sitting down? >> i am standing up and i do that to keep my own energy up and i think that is a challenge especially face-to-face environments, i wrote a book about teaching videos, the camera eat your energy. i know when i am doing a special like this, i have to be especially energetic and that's one reason why for students and

teachers is exhausting, you need to add that energy, i had to be even more energetic. of course it will be useful as the recipient, it's help if you stand as well, get a little back-and-forth and that helps your cognitive functioning so yes, i am standing. [laughter] >> the human brain filters out the relevant information and background noise, how does that fit in with the context? >> that's a complicated questi question. to filter out redundant stuff, that will depend upon what the

person thinks the framework they bring in will help them determine what really relevant or redundant is. it probably involves more thinking about the context you face in the learning environment. how do you help students recognize what matters and what doesn't matter? is probably more that design of content specifically thinking about and cultivating tension so it's a deeper question here. [laughter] >> think our first question has positive questions about interaction. i engaged in multiple activities at once especially when the tests are mundane. >> absolutely. fit of all, three things. first of all, as we all know, doing more things at once, there

is so much about the myths of multi- tasking. we think we can do this very well and scientists have shown we are actually not as good as we can get that. however, we do similar kinds of things, when both things require thought or full attention, you can watch tv and fold laundry. you can have a conversation and do something that doesn't require a lot of your attention so that is what a lot of us, why we feel we can multitask because we often can we doing things not requiring our full attention. where weun into problems is when you try to listen to a webinar for example and also respond to e-mails in both of those things require your attention so that will diminish

your ability to retain something from the webinar as well as write a carefully and constructed e-mail with no typos so that is the way to think about it multisking when it requires our attention. having sat said that, we can be good at certain things. it drives our curiosity. the fact that i say i wonder if i do this differently. i'm going to jump down this radical but it might lead into something intereing. it's also created thinking the results of two different things, i'm doing this that i think about my project i've been stuck on for a long time while sothing else comes up. that can be a creative and

productive thing that our distractible brain is doing for us. then i recognize wait a minute, these things come together. i distractible brain is great for creativity and curiositye can find structures and activities in the classroom to help support that. did you write about that in the book andome of the chapter i am connecting on teaching, so what i'm teaching this afternoon, iill talk about those strategies becau can chanl a distractible brain into interesting ways to structure connection activity. >> all right. ife have time for one more question, i think ts is a relative few about the physlogical aspects such as having enough to eat or being dedrated. i know i can be stressed and

does it become an equity issue? >> all of those things will interfere with attention. if you're hungry or worried about taking care of your sick sibling, everything. anxiety, all of these things interfere with attention so of course, we want to think about this. were not really going to talk about -- there are six principles that i argue, that we can use to sustain attention. one is thinking about community. absolute there is an equity issue and thinking about the attention to students in particular challenges they are facing. when i pay attention to you, you're more likely to pay

attention to me so pay attention to those stunts and challenges they are facing. i'm not going to talk much about that issueo much today. it is in the bookut i will talk about community more in the afternoon session absolutely, we need to be aware of the things drawing away the attention of our students read the stories true of students have things like anxiety or learning challenges, that is alway true. it is especially true now with everything going on in the world around us so as teachers, we need to pay closer attention to our students and the challenges they are facing. >> all right. the questions keep coming so i don't know if we have a lot of time for questions. >> let's do second half. i think i can get through and 20, 25 minutes at most. how are we doing on time?

>> you got until 10:30 a.m. >> some of these i belve you will address in your second half. >> okay. good. we going to start to think about solutions now and what we can do in order to help cultivate and sustain the atmosphere attention. i'll argue for three things. think about structure, how we structure is experience, think about the fact that attention fatigue over time, what are we doing to renew it on a regular basis? then i'll talk about the role that i think this place in the attention process. all right. the first two things, i will argue we should think about a

playwright. this will be an easy thing to hang your hat on in terms of what to take away from this session and think about the idea of the fact that the attention of our students as limits. that's true not only for students but all of us. limited capacity resource and fatigue over time. one of the great demonstrations in 2014, it looked at how long did students engage with videos and for large loops conducted for multiple years? i believe this data comes from something like 7 million viewers and they looked at how long students watched the videos that were part of it, how long they actually stayed on the video before signing off and doing something else?

you'll notice, it's pretty striking, when students had to watch on an online course, connected entirely online, up to about ten minutes, they watched the entire video. between nine to 12 minutes, they started to watch only about half of it and when the videos got longer than 12 minutes, they'd watch only about 20%. what you can see here is the extent to which attention stays over time. i want to give you a cognitive statement of that, what we are asking students to do is pay directed attention directed attention requires effort, it plays a central role in our ability to focus, it's under our

control some of the time, but this is what i want to focus on right now, susceptible to fatigue. our attention gradually fades over time and requires more and more effort to pay attention over the course of this experience. this is true with any experience. it varies in intensity, sometimes more than others some will say they can't pay attention over a 45 minute. it is just how our attention works. so mental effort leads to directed attention fatigue. so think about that. of course, the great articles posted on the harvard business review, this is especially true

of resume fatigue. one of the things i love is the fact that on assume meeting classrooms, having a live discussion, we are looking at basis the entire time and this is not normal for us. how often do we stand with an 3 feet of a colleague and have a constant gaze at them? it makes us uncomfortable and tired. when we talk about people in real life, we are looking around a lot. we turn our gaze, we look out the window but on video calls or when students are on their cameras in the classroom, if i look away, they think they know longer and paying attention. you don't make the same judgment in face-to-face context. you might recognize them staring at one another and larry shows enthusiasm, you want to know if

somebody is lying, you get them close to the face and look them in the eye. the joke is, we are all cringing as that happened because we don't want people getting up close and looking in our eyes like that for an extended period of time but that is what we are doing in these resume calls. there's a special way with our current situation is causing attention fatigue. but i want you to think about as you create a learning expanse. students, whether the online year, as you get back into the classroom and hopefully the next year, think about the fact that a playwright and for 2000 plus years, playwrights have to think about, how do i capture and sustain the attention of humans over the course of the two or three hour. they are forced to sit still in

their seats and only look at the audience i think we can learn something from the strategies they've developed to do that. first of all, you get a program and the program tells you how this will unfold. i think there is strong value to that. to say to your students, we want to talk about 20 minutes on this, if the conversation is good, we will political longer. then we will do this activity and then i'll talk to you about 20 minutes and then a mini lecture. helping people understand how long i need to sustain my focus. being able to lay out the structure of the experience requires us to be more organized but if the attention of your students is important to you, it's worth thinking about.

there are acts and intermissions. they start with something to draw your attention and then when things get interesting, they might pause, think about as we go through these examples, the work i mentioned earlier talks about questions being really important to start the learning experience. about a playwright drawing the audience in the initial action something mysterious, we have discussions. willingham argues that a lot of times teachers just come start talking about the answers to the big questions about discipline but what we need to do is spend more time surfacing the question. what is an interesting question we want to answer today? beginning with that, we get the

attentionf our students. ere are daily questions, show students in a microbiology class, asking them to quickly jump on their phones and devices and fd everything they can about that microbe and together the classompiles a quick overview of the microbe forhe day so it is a great way for the classroom, she useshat to drop the students in and capture their attention, use their devices, is not about vices or no devices using that what they discover, to lnch into her lecture. sh knows some things they will find takes it and pushes them forward into the classroom that day. how are you beginning the day that draws the students in? what kind of questions can you ask at the beginning? second, how are you offering

change? to be active versus passive engagement. as i said, the important thing is not so much to say i am not cturing, only lecturing even on assume call is bad idea. as 815 minute lecture and stop and do activities go back to t the, if you're doing lectures or videos or breaking it up into smaller chapters especially if you do things online if you have students do activities, don't always go to break up groups. maybe you have a whole class discussion or timesou speak to them individually, may they collaborate on a google doc or whatever it might be, think about how you is very the activities for the students in the classroom, i think it is not a bad idea to do group work and have students move their desks as a way to re-energize and

recapture their attention. a transitio moment for longer sessions, i think w need to have breaks. this aicle discusses good recommendations for that. on and off camera so students are snding 15 minutes or whatever it mig be looking at basis the entire time maybe they do an activity to turn the camera off engagemt activities activities. think about the fact that change renews attention. your changing to renew attention so how often do help them reengage? doing something different every ve or ten minutes for two or three ships and across. i think would go a long way to help reengage. i sat in a workshop once with a colleague of mine who did an interesting thing with us, she had us write down strategies we

normally use on index cards. you can see what i wrote for some of mine. then she had us shuffle them around. seeing what was the kind of pattern most likely for learning, i was interested to see a pattern likely to help support and sustain attention so i encourage you to d something like this especially if you're struggling with your teaching right no in terms of intention and engagement, write down all the things you can do o a synchronous class and put them on different postings or index cards and shuffle them around. what'she best way for me t create an experience that will sustain the attention of my students over this. like to tal about the fact that no matter what we do, attention will be lostometimes. things are going really well and

it goes on longer than it should and then what you see here, this lks about the idea, thisalks about the extent to which we can learn from expses about how to reengage attention and talks out the extent to which is observed in black churches when they notice the attentionf the congregation, they would pause and say can i get an amen? they would do tt. fo times. everybody shots back. ...

james: now everyone to write downhese three things . but still take a look at this togeth and see what we notice. there i no problem that i cut a reserve for when things got a little slow here. is time for us to look at it, like you said we are going to do group work now. i would lik everyone to get up and move the desks. and that's an opportunity for us to break and re-energize ourselves to get back to this. so you want to think what about how you structure the expeences but also we have in your pocket that you can pull t. it's going to help reengage the students in the moment. >> solicitor playwright. thinking like a poet in teaching like appellate. think again aut the fact that our attention fades over time like not only an experience but also as we bece more familiar with something. you tend to pay less attention to it. your students are used to coming into the classroom, sitting down

and listening to the teachers. and doing the same kinds of basic activities the cssrooms always do. lecturing, if our discussion. in writing, all that kind of stuff. and so i would encourage you if you really wanto capture the attention of your students to start to think lik a poet. one of the things that ptry does for us inhe same way that a lot of things do for us,s to renew our attention to the everyday world. and start of the poet of the book is all of her because she had so any poemshat she wrote about attention tohe world i love her column here instructions for living life. pay attention and be astonished and until about it. to me it is since be a great litt sort of guide to what we want our students to be able to do. we want them to pay attention to the course material. we want them to be astonished that it can be this amazing stuff. and then we want themo talk

about it. whether tt's into a discussion or through their assessments, through the paper or whatever might be. we want them to talk about that wondershey have seen in our discipline. in order to accomplish that i argue for something called the creati of signature attention activity. signure attention activities are inc. that you create degned to reawaken your students and the wonders of your discipline. its connection t their lives in the evyday world. and this is youhould practice your most creative tngs. thinking creatively about teaching. things are really going to sort of, grab the atttion of your students . that i the goal . to get the students to see something with brand-new isoprene the se way the still life painting tryo get us to see that. try to seen a new way or a poem is decided to g us to think about an everyday experience in a new light. that is the goal of the siature activity. what we mean by this.

here are a fewxamples. in the book ialk about art historiaholy css, college, he died a fewears ago. gave the students this incredible assignment . she asked the students to go tort museum nearby. every week, and look at the same painting and wte a new response that. one - t response pd for every single week. and right 13 papers about the same painting. she describes this article, this wrote out this, these papers began in very superficial ways. and then as the studentsad a look and looking keep loong over and over again, is astonishing but they were able to note and how they were able to start making connections between this wk in their own lives the wor around them, things they have learned in other classes. they got deer and deeper in their analysis of i because the treat that the

teacher had createdhis fascinating assignment decided to really get them t slow down and look. i had an opportunity tobserve a teacher on mywn campus he was teaching a theology class about introction to the bible. and what she did was another great example of the kind of signature activityor attention. she would have the sdents learn about t book of genesis. the first book of the bible. so she did was she had her students s across from one another in pairs. and they had to readhe text aloud. it's just that fir few paragraphs and pause aer every sentence. in order to think about the extent to which they had noticed somethg new. something thought-provoking. mething fascinating in the ntence. and i observed this for 20 plus minutes . the things that the students were able to draw this from even the first few

sentences genesis wereeally remarkable. but it was because she had created something to force them to slo down and look at it ink about itn a new and diffent way. and lastly john dewey, one of his john dewey recommended prints, for the teachers. it was to have the students take every day objects and things around them and to really kd of dive into a more deeply and think about them. and so drawi from that's, like the ideaere kevin everyday obje analysis or something that you might have the students even in their o hom find and try to do an analysis by askg them to question. first, what ist . resisting. take a close look at it and describe it. so what is important about this thing. what is it connected to. what can i learn from it. how does it connect with you. even teaching the students may

learn to know about i it's a blessing, now what. at can i do without. at questions can i ask about it. can i write a paper about in relationship to the thing . this came from brown university. and provide little bit more detail about that in m book. pitch think by the teacher right. this-shirt was produced in some factory and t other side of the world. by people working under difficult labor conditions. which relates tour trade poli which relates to politics and economics a yet, it's fabric. in particula item which has a feel tot that relates to ascetics . you can take that t-shirt w can make it relate to almost anything in the wor. the same is true for almost any other object you can come up with. especially now, as you are thinking about what you might do theistudents for you might invie themo look at the spaces around them a findings in thosepaces that are

fascinating that you can use as an avenue right window to new and creative thinking about your discipline. so this is kind of my recommendation here. try to think about what h activities that will reawaken students to the fascinating wonders of your content. how can you hav those in on a regular basis. so the structure there will be talking more about the one time experienced like thinking about the structure of that more out the who course that these type of signature activities, the belong to them ery day but try to think about doing something like this once a week or in the four times like when you know that student attention sarsen leg. okay, think like a plague right, think like a poet. in the last thing that i want to talk about is very briefly. i want to talk about these

things in which helps motivate attention. the first time i give a talk about this is the very first time, i thought to theudience, when our year to students paying most attention in class. it in the raised hands and said when were taking a test . that sent me to thinking about more research about thentention . i believe there is a role player. that the assessment can help this working for us in attention. we might make a distinction in terms of motivation which is intrinsic and extrinsic motivations. we want to pay attention and learning because the are interested in the care of the subject matter. and portrayed as the enemy of that and students just do it for the grade in the best kind of this external motivator. but whate want to think about actually is the extent to which these things can actually work

together. like one kind of motivation is going to resolve your students. and so motivations can actually have a role to play in directing the attention of your students. i would invite you to think about the extent to which this is oft true in our everyday life and extrinsic motivators like aessment hand-in-hand and intrinsic motivators le our own environment. this what we get things lik . we know it's good for us . we know exercise is good for us. we should do it because we want to pray to be how any ofs do things like enter a five k because it gives us kind of extra motivation to get ready for that particular performance. we don't care how about we did . begin ourselves these kinds of motivators to help push us through when things get difficult. and that's what i thi an extended motivator can do. he can help engage us because

when you're tired or how quite is interested in it initially, the subsequent to an aching pushes into that engagent then ideally, it's an interesting expresng . good learning experience for the students and once or enjoy, that intrinsic motivation will kick in. especially now during this pandemic when your students he so much to do that so much to worry about, i thank you so tually can be an equity issue as well. putting a little bit of things that you are asking your students to do, duringhis synchronous session neurotic cls, number studes recognize where their attention is going to sort of give them the most bang for t buck. and if you design your activities well, you know though help. find that reward that your students for the work they do on those assessments three things for example like getting very low stakes, putting very low stakes on the kd of regular in

class or for the students do. so if you're in class and you're having the to some kind of activity, some sort of participation rate. it's these kinds of things that u have your students do like for emple worksheets, solving problems getting together in groups to do a particular task. if help your students out actually, help them focus their attention by findi a way to rewardf the efforts they put into those things. i viewhis as being in conflict of ierest sick relation because some of your stunts will be motivated by that and some students might needhat little nudge get involved. they might say okay, i need to sort of check can get this working here becse this will for me. this i something that will help migrate from the class. this will design and help others as well. so what i'm arguing here is

think about engagement i think the most impornt engagement activity is to be thereach week as a student attention activity. collected on paper or electronicly inhabit make a minimal conservation towards the grade of your student. i always asked the students in class to the spring annotations o passages targeted i do for example i'll put them in groups. they get a paper copy and then the dent i always tell them then take the crap outf the thing. what you did write everything down that you can think of. keywor, things did it remind you up. the goal is to brainstorm everythinghey can think of in relationship with t poem and once i've done that we sort look att all together as he will make sense okay and things they want to be abl to consume going to do this kind of thing, the studentset, accounted is

very low stakes. he said all that matters ishat you do it. and he put effort into it. and if you're willing to take ten or 15 minutes now to really focus on this and ge us much stuff written on their as you can. so i know that's helpful for them. so they intended to it, the be better at doing that when i asked him to do it in the papers or on the exam. so that is my basic argument here about assessment. bu the assessment has a role to play in attention even when they're doing their activities or if you are preparing students for a paper am or whatever it might be. the idea is that this is something that will help you. i think we should be doing that kind of thing. in order to help direct the attention to the things that will be helpful. let's skip that one here. and try to wrap up now. because i want to make sure we have time for discussion. langmac ten or 15 answers lofgren what we talked about there, three things. structure renewal assessment . thedea here is that when

students have more structure, and you have thought delivery about the root structure the experience with intention in mind. and do a better job of keeping your students, their attention sustaineover the course of the. we talked about renewal prayed about how that signature activity activities can renew the attention. in the last thing we talked about is the fact that the assessment has a role to play here. and the low stake assessment on engagement activities can help directly the attention of the students and can help from other learning by getting them to focus on the things that are going to help them. but we did not discuss today are the three elements and these are sort of other chapters in the book. so if you're interested in getting more than this, you'll be on the weimar the things in the book. ho community supports attention. helphow security can hp draw attention in the world can play

in supporting students attention. in the mti- know people always curious abouthis one. in the book i argue that but i think these things can be helpful i think it's more hopeful for a teacher to think about their own kind of things in the room and mindfulness. try to be expecting students to suddenly become practitioners of mindfulness, the research on this is very complex in terms of what the role of mindfulness in the classroom is. but, in get into all of that detail the book and see my guments there. so i want to finish your grade with my oliver again. i know that i reay have come to believe of the course of dog this research is that the clasoom is learning experience ey can be retrieved. like an intention retreat. some of the very beginning of this that distractions are the ocean in which we swim. an intention kd of rises out

of that ocean like violence. i'm paying attention and getting focused on losing oselves in some kind of intellectual positive work can be a source of well-being actually. did research on providing a good demonstrati of that party did we want to think about the fact that our passion can b a place where they retrieved fro the kind of distractions around us a have the opportunity to really focus on something that is important. think about your classroom is a place where attention is by unit cultivatednd sustained. and that is that in most work a teacher. okay researchers, revokes happy ys, and he saved . distraction, focus on both education or credit in the distracted mind and the scientific overview of distractions a attention today. and i know you havey book

"distracted" what i'm talking about biology and other things. i will wrap up there. let's see what kind of discussions we have. host: we have a lot of wonderful questionsn the&a. but i hope will be able to get to all of them. i know there are some feud posted in the chat as well. they're buried there's also some great comments inhere. at this i will go throughhose as well. but we have whate have several people asking kind of how this really in a current with covid-19. first related to the idea of getting up and moving aroundnd moving chairs in a time of thing. obviouy counters adviceor getting from those who all stay in our little bubbles. any suggestions. james: getting up and moving

around right now . it's a difficult situation right. so, some of these things we can do right now. what i try to do like the small teaching periods kind of offer a variety of things . not all going to work in every context . ruth there's one or two things that we can do a little bit differently to cultivate attention by all means, not everything is going to work. take a couple of things. if you learn one thing, it's going to help make attention more resilience to your teaching. that would be great. it you can expect everything's going to work in every context) is frustrating right now. >> there's a kind of relevant questions related to that is to what degree does the consistency and predictability is needed right now. the students in this age of chaos and uncertainty.

balance with that needed to mix it up and to focus t attention. james: so there, the one thing that can be really helpful there is actually kind of applies to both this change part of the comfort heart. that is to make the structure of the exrience go to the students in a face-to-face classroom, one of the things that i like to do typically is off tohe side of the board, one - two - three - four. here is what is going to happen the class today. sometime appetite is on there but sometimes i just tal it through. i think we can do the same thing in his own classroom. and again, thexample give to people is that you're sitting in a conference session. select the regular one. in the good old days. we are in the future) and that presenter is going on and on. and you say okay,nd this is my last point. and then you can kind of perk up

at that moment. really saying like here's my first idea. and now am going to move on to the second one. those are the moments in which our attention tends to prevent out because we realized something important is happening. there is a change. so plaing that out first of all, it's comfort and predictability. i know what's going to happen here. but it also gives that sort of planning situated changes going to happen. host: action tallies into several questions about timing and attention spans. how long whether it's a video in your online class for your face-to-face classroom, along should be graded someone thoug maybe were no longer in the age of the students. have not heard that one before. sue and i should go a wife and hair. see i that appes. [laughter]. i've never heard that. going to look that up. here's what i would say.

you have the videos rig. like a scientific answer to that. to thing to keep in mind. first of all, it's probably shorter online and it is national classroom. right . via a 45 minute video lecte for your students get out. there is no reason might not 0315 minutes segment entrance and was . personal, and acknowledges the difficulty sort of paying attention and difficult to the cognitive thing online. the other thing is that your students called out. prior, while i took an online class the summer because i wanted to know what my students were experiencing so into the spanish class. one of the things he didn't do, there is like a one hour lecture that i had to watch. multiple times, i kept thinking

i don't have time for that right now. maybe you didn't get back to it. but, if it was not broken up, i might've said okay i can do the first one right now. and then will do sekulow later tonight . right like so if you're breaking it up, you're giving that opportunity. you getting opportunity for that to happen. it helping students who might otherwise have difficulty getting to the full hour. and thing i would say is in terms of the actual classroom you probably go longer than a kind of depends on you. how energetic are you. how much are you willing to kind of get out there. and drawnd attention to it. if we all just kind of have to find her sweet spot there. i can be . energetic in the classroom . some willing to go 20 - 30 minutes of talking. that's about as far as iill go . and some folks were quieter or can kind of a lower level, might be shorter than that.

he is have to know yourself. host: along the same line, and classroom and i see this in the classrooms and i hear this a lot from our other students, the ability to try to engages attention and typ looking at thm but on zoom, often the videos are often were recommending any suggestions or ideas for how to kind of gauge their attention when were in the spirit is sue and i don't really know what you can do about that. for reasons that we talked about as well as other kind of privacy reasons. first fall i don't think that's the best solution. you can encourage people to do stuff in the chat. like multiple engagements. if like let's say you have a session in which you are going to do 15 minutes of talking then you put students into shared docs to do something together.

from the very beginning you can say something like, in 15 minutes, going to be in a google doc. in order to be able to do that, you got to follow what were going to do. you need to be able to pull through. that's the best thing that i can think of. are you can post questions long way from me know that you understand by singing in the chat. those are the only things and i can think about this. again, hard and challenging situation right now. real hard. host: so as far as your research is about attention are there any issues regarding bilingual students that you found. it may require cognitive capacity for the content read. james: yes, that's another reason may be to think twice about well obvioly a second language. of course, that's going to take up some of their attention . so

think about the intention is like a bucket. like there's only so much that can go in there at once. so anything else is taking up space slightly less space for whatever the content is. i just saw something come up in the chat with a good suggestion. it's about taking notes and submitting notes in class. this last question. but on this course, you want to think about things like you recorded you make it available. in making sure that you are using like captions for example. giving a presentation. in the classroom, making sure the students do have access to translions . so they do have devices to hel them with translation. so you can tnk about those things. some other staff, there's

cognitive resrch things that they probably do needo look at more help and support. >> can't tell you in the communicators, we take a look at issues independent following broadband and video provide space with matt, presidenc health of connects pted and present patricia . >> our members have done such a great job of serving their communities and meeting the needs and keeping americans connected and partied with of our members and stepping up through adopting their pledge to keep americans connected to. but by the same token, we've also recognized there are still continuing needs, needs to serve students, needs to work with schools . needs to work with hospitals and medical facility so that we can improve telehealth . ways that we can increase the broadband network speeds in ways that we can serve underserved areas .

>> watch the communicators tonight and eight eastern on "c-span2". tonight former president barack obama and his new memoir, a promised land reflecting on his life and political career paredes interviewed by washington post columnist michelle and the foundation president elisabeth alexander. a former president barack obama tonight in a 30 eastern on "c-span2". you are watching book tv, on "c-span2". every weekend with the latest nonfiction book and authors "c-span2", created by aricans cable television company, is a public service and brought to you tay by your television provider. host: good evening and welcome per minute live online author event in this bookstore. it by name