EduCon 2024

Our phones, our laptops, our watches have become more and more sophisticated about how they demand our attention, and many adults (myself included) struggle to manage how we allocate our focus. For students, this problem is often even more acute.

As a result, the 2022-23 school year has seen a return of the "Cell Phone Ban" wars as schools struggle to help kids regain their in-class focus, post-Zoom school. Districts are buying Yondr pouches, students are posting TikTok videos on how to subvert cell phone bans, and teachers and administrators are often caught in the middle.

But - what if we considered that learning how to manage our attention was a fundamental part of being a fully engaged citizen of our world?

Can we develop ways to teach kids to value their attention? Can schools be the place where students learn to understand the attention economy and to understand their role with in it?

Let's spend 90 minutes thinking about how we could teach our way through the Attention Economy.