Focus, Attention, Distraction

When I train on the use of technology in the classroom, teachers often bring up how distracting it can be.  I would love to give solutions like put the device away, or collect the devices, but the truth is...the devices that are distractions are also the devices that allow students to be curious and to search for answers.  So I don't.

What others tend to call distracted behavior, I refer to as curiosity.  Our brains are designed for it.  We find something that is interesting and we learn more about it.  When something grabs our attention, we have laser-like focus to learn about it.  When we have an interesting problem, we focus in on how to solve it, solve it, then move on.

I guess we just need to help our students be curious about our content.  With so many distractions on hand, we are competing for attention.  You can drive yourself crazy with the trying to remove all distractions, but I figure we just need to start working differently.

Knowing that focus will not be on one thing for the entire 50 minutes of the class period... How are we going to design our lesson?  Where will the focus be?  How will we grab attention?  Once we have it, what are we going to do with it?

Once you have tried that... What data did you collect (quantitative or qualitative)?  What does that tell you about your lesson?  Did it work? How will you use this information to adjust your lesson tomorrow?