Managing Distractions with Mario

In terms of relevant life skills to foster in all students, managing distractions has to be high on the list. Our aim is to have students who can successfully focus on tasks and manage their time effectively. So how exactly do we go about helping our students achieve that?

We know “Knowledge is Power,” so providing background information and suggestions for how to maintain focus on tasks, is essential.

The following suggestions are taken from a presentation I will deliver to Grade 9 & 10 students here at the Western Academy of Beijing, organised around 4 key ideas:
1. Prep for it
2. Track it
3. Block it
​4. Sort it

Just like choosing the right vehicle for the race, you need to set yourself up for success. Here are some tips for a positive start to your work:

Find a quiet space to work. If this is a challenge, consider noise-canceling headphones, which will allow you to concentrate more easily.

Many people like to listen to music while they work. I recommend people reconsider the use of music – particularly any music with lyrics – while they work. Evidence that music helps you study has not been proven. The famous “Mozart effect” has been discredited many times, so even classical music may not offer any advantages.

The Chrome/Edge extension Tab Snooze lets you ‘put tabs to sleep’ and wake them up at a later time. This is an option if you don’t want to lose those tabs.

Otherwise, close any tabs that don’t have any direct benefit to the work you are currently focusing on. Simple.

Turn off Notifications on your computer and your phone. Having a phone nearby can distract you, regardless of whether you have it on silent mode – so put your phone out of sight while studying.

Enable Night Shift on your devices so that you are more ready for sleep once you have finished your work

Enable Do Not Disturb on your Mac and iPhone/iPad so you are not distracted by friends/family wanting to chat.

On a Mac, use Reader View on Safari to remove advertising and other distracting elements when researching. This works only on articles where the 4 lines (shown in the magnifying glass) appear on the left of the address bar. 

Reader Mode works just the same way, and can be added as a Chrome Extension or an Edge Browser Extension.

Don’t have any rotating backgrounds on your desktop. Visual movement (such as a gif, moving advertisement or background) attracts our attention. According to brain researcher John Medina, this is likely due to evolutionary causes, where visual movement indicated either potential threats or food sources. If we have moving objects in our periphery, we are likely to be more distracted.

Chrome extensions can often distract, but Momentum is a great choice of an extension that helps keep you on track. Each new tab prompts a beautiful image, an inspirational quote for the day, and the question: What is your main focus for today? There is also a To Do section, where you can add tasks, and have that satisfying feeling as you check each one off.

Consider the use of Pomodoro Timers. The Pomodoro Technique is a time management approach that breaks work periods into chunks (usually 25 mins), with rest periods (5 mins) in between. There are many websites/apps with timers you can use to chunk work into ‘pomodoros’, e.g. marinaratimer.com

If you hate the idea of studying alone, then Study With Me videos on YouTube could be just what you’re after! These videos are usually broken into Pomodoro style chunks of 20-25 mins with 5 min breaks built-in, and can last for as long as you need to study.

Perhaps you’re not entirely sure where your time goes when you’re trying to study? Maybe you’re adamant YouTube isn’t the problem? Either way, if you track it, you’ll know about it.

Screen time is available on a Mac now, along with iOS devices. You can see your usage statistics by app, and see your usage over a week or a day. This can help identify trends you may not be aware of, such as total pick-ups of your phone per day. 

Using devices such as the Apple Watch or the Mi Band, you can track your sleep. People your age should be getting around 8-10 hours sleep a night. Adults should get about 7-8 hours a night. Sleep has a profound effect on your ability to concentrate. A recent study from the University of California, found (and other studies have confirmed) that to your brain, one sleepless night (being awake for over 19 hours) is the cognitive equivalent of being legally drunk.

Likewise, tracking your exercise or steps, using a phone, Apple Watch or exercise band will help you notice your physical activity (or inactivity). Studies such as Chang and Etnier (2009) have shown that moderate-intensity exercise is related to increased performance in working memory and cognitive flexibility, whereas high-intensity exercise improves the speed of information processing.

Ok, so you have tried prepping and tracking but you need to try something more proactive. Time to get some help by blocking some of the websites/apps that tend to lead you astray.

If you’re finding it a challenge to stay focused, you may choose to set downtime or app limits for entertainment apps, to help you be more productive.

Another possibility for Mac users is Self Control. You can download this and use it to temporarily block access to distracting websites.

Check out this cross-platform alternative: Chrome Extension StayFocusd. This option is highly configurable, and can allow you to spend a certain time period on certain websites, then restrict access. ​

Another Chrome/Edge extension is Forest. Whenever you want to stay focused, plant a tree. Your tree will grow while you focus on your work. Leaving the app halfway will cause your tree to die. You can grow your own garden!

Block colour: It is incredible the impact color has on your brain. Here is an image of my iPhone home page, with a number of notifications showing up. I did an experiment where I turned the color filter on to greyscale for 24 hours. It was horrifying! And yet, it worked. I just didn’t enjoy going on my phone as much as I usually did. It really curbed my usage. If you’re having trouble putting your phone away, try this! 

If you get organised and plan for your work in advance, you can make life so much easier. Here are some tips to help you level up with your organisation.

My Study Life is a great website and app that helps you get organised. It’s designed especially for the needs of HS and University students. The good news is it also works well for flexible timetables like our 9-day rotating timetable. Available on all platforms, it can integrate with your school Microsoft/Google Account to provide you with reminders for whatever you need.

To Do is Microsoft’s organizational tool. You have access to this with your school Microsoft account. You can break tasks down into simple steps, add due dates, and set reminders for your daily checklist to keep you on track. You can also create shared lists if you have group projects to complete.

Available on all platforms, Evernote works across multiple devices and can even search your handwriting. Evernote has a list or to-do feature to help organize your life.

So there you go! I hope you have a few more tools at your disposal to help manage distractions. Below you will find a list of helpful resources (many of the ones mentioned above, and more). The more practice you have at managing your time effectively, the easier you will find it when those deadlines increase. All the best!

Reducing Distractions on Digital Devices

Distractions are as old as time. Think back to high school when perhaps you were doodling on a pencil case or passing notes to friends. What is different is that the very tools that allow us to access such wonderful learning and communication opportunities, can also have the power to distract us.

In the presentation below, you will find ideas and suggestions on helping students develop good work habits, practice self-tracking, and also provide suggestions for parental monitoring – IF it gets to that stage. I hope you find something of value for your family.

We also have a Padlet where we are collecting your great ideas! Please feel free to add a suggestion.

 

Cross-posted at GreaTechxpectations

Learning How to Focus

Take a look at the photo below. What does it tell you? What do you notice?

It tells me that with close to 60 tabs open, this student was so distracted by the extension that he/she wasted a significant amount of time being off task. The worrying thing is that if this student continues these patterns of behaviour, he/she will find it increasingly hard to focus on learning. Let’s face it – learning is our business!

 

But how much direct teaching goes into helping students learn how to focus? I’m willing to wager not enough. We need to be fair to our students: we can’t expect them to pick it up through osmosis. As teachers, part of our role is to teach into how to focus, not merely that one should focus.

Telling students to delete distracting elements such as non-educational chrome extensions is not enough; students need to understand the reasons behind the request – why is it unsuitable for learning?

After all, they’re not doing this maliciously – they have a genuine curiosity and love making their devices feel like their own. The trouble is, many of their choices have a negative impact on their ability to stay on track and focused.

Helping students to identify what helps their learning and what hinders their learning is a great place to start.

 

Chrome Extensions

Recently, we had a number of students install a Chrome Extension called Tabby Cat. It’s a cute, harmless-looking extension that shows a different cat every time you open a new tab. You can interact with it, and sometimes you will get little gifts to play with. Sounds ok, right?

 

I asked the class to tell me what they liked about this Tabby Cat. Predictably, the responses were as follows:

“It’s cute!”

“It’s fun because you get toys to play with if you keep opening new tabs.”

“Every new tab is different.”

“I want to see what is going to happen next and if I will get any gifts”

 

Helping students understand that each new picture of a cat is essentially rewarding distracting behaviour, can help them make better choices.One recommendation is to replace Tabby Cat with the Chrome Extension Momentum, which gives one new picture a day, together with the question: What is your main focus for today? This personal reminder prompts students that they have a task to complete, with a beautiful photo that doesn’t change every tab.

Vision and Movement

“Vision trumps all other senses,”  according to John Medina, author of Brain Rules. Approximately half of the brain’s resources are dedicated to processing visuals. Our brains are attuned to noticing colour and movement, so moving backgrounds, animated gifs and scrolling advertisements draw our attention.

In a G3 class recently, we did an audit of our visual noise. Common things we saw were:

• Animated snow falling on Gmail backgrounds (or similar)
• Desktop backgrounds where the picture changes every 5 seconds
• Highly pixelated images used as desktop backgrounds

In pairs, students helped each other make good decisions to remove distracting movement – that was the easy part. The hard part was making good decisions about their desktop backgrounds. Saying goodbye to their favourite sports star or cartoon character was more of a challenge for some.

 

We discussed quality resolution of images being more pleasing to the eye. We also introduced the idea of colour association. Green is a calming colour (think, Green Rooms backstage in theatres) and blue can help with productivity. Encouraging students to choose a green/blue-based image that is high quality helped them see they still had some choice and the option of personalisation, but not at the expense of their focus.

 

Number of Desktops

Students using school laptops that don’t go home, really have no need for multiple desktops. Deleting extra desktops will help to remove the temptation to swipe between apps.

Reader View (Safari) or Readability (Chrome Extension)
When looking at websites, particularly those which have articles, using Reader View in Safari or  the Chrome Extension Readability can help strip away those annoying advertisements and other extraneous and distracting material, allowing us to focus primarily on the text and images in the article. Check out the tutorial below:

Effective Digital Reading using Safari Reader View from UWC South East Asia on Vimeo.

Tidying your “Room” 

When in a rush, it’s easy to leave your desktop background as a cluttered disaster, always thinking, “I’ll clean it up later.” Many of our student’s desktops look like this (not unlike my teenage bedroom):

 

 

A secondary-click (right-click, or 2-finger tap) > Clean up by > Kind, helps organise files into groups of the same type. See below:

 

Once organised by kind, it’s easy to trash all the screenshots and/or arrange files into folders.

 

We recommend moving files/folders to Google Drive or Documents on a Mac (depending on file type) rather than keep things on the desktop, so as to make startup as smooth as possible. Aesthetically, it’s also more pleasing!

 

These suggestions are aimed at helping empower our younger students to make better choices by being well informed about distracting elements on their laptop. If you are interested in specific apps and Chrome Extensions to take managing distractions one step further (blocking specific sites etc), you may wish to check out my recent post on Parenting in the Digital Age.

 

Do you have any other great tips for managing distractions in primary? We welcome your ideas!

[Cross-Posted at GreaTechxpectations]

Parenting in the Digital Age

Being the first group of people to parent the iPad generation certainly is an adventure.

On the one hand, we are amazed by their capabilities to navigate between applications, create movies, build websites and FaceTime their grandparents. On the other hand, we may feel anxious about buzzwords like ‘screentime’, ‘game-addiction’, ‘distractions’ and ‘cyber bullying.’

Keep in mind that advances in technology have helped families in numerous ways. Here are some of our favourites:

• Communication – We can communicate quickly and easily with people around the globe via messages, email, FaceTime, FaceBook and instant messaging. In our international school setting, this is a huge benefit.
• Efficiency and Organisation – GPS has changed the nature of travel. We can find any address easily, even if we haven’t been there before. We can use apps to organise our shopping list, to sell our used goods, and let’s not forget do our banking.
• Learning – Now we can teach ourselves anything with the powers of YouTube, Pinterest and Google combined! Lost the rules to your board game? No problem! Need to change a tyre? Can do! Learning can be 24-7.
• Entertainment – It’s only in the last few years that Netflix came into being! Developments in movie and video distribution, the gaming industry and the explosion of apps means there is a little something for everyone when it comes to entertainment.
• Medical – At the consumer end of the scale, fitness monitoring is now built into many devices, and made it easier to be aware of the need to keep exercising regularly.

We are, however, realistic about the challenges facing parents too. We have put together a resource that has information, articles, and apps around common pressure points for parents. We have tried to provide a balanced perspective around some of these key issues so that you as parents can find an approach or strategy that best fits your parenting style.

We encourage you to keep the lines of communication open with your children. Inspired by the Key Jar, we have put together a list of questions that might help you begin some conversations with your child around some of these issues. Perhaps print them both off and mix them in together?

Common Sense Media has a lot of resources around parent concerns, so that is also a great source of information.

At the end of the day, each family is different, and you need to find the right combination of solutions to challenges that works for you. I hope these resources are a step in the right direction.

(Cross-posted at GreaTechxpectations)