Using technology to distract students from distraction

To give a student an iPad is to place him in front of a bay window open to an endless sea of distraction.

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Yaros’ course uses an iPad app loaded with a constant stream of course material to keep students engaged.

Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, eMail, cat GIFs – with a mobile device and a WiFi connection, students have plenty of things to pay attention to instead of the lecture in front of them.

But Ronald Yaros, an assistant professor at the University of Maryland’s Phillip Merrill College of Journalism, is hoping he has found a way to keep students so engaged during a class period that they won’t have time for distraction – by using the very same mobile devices that could lead them astray.

Yaros calls his model a “MEEC,” or a manageable educational environment of collaboration.…Read More

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