Fortnite Mobile, a trendy free game, is distracting students and overloading schools’ wifi, reports Patricia Hernandez on Kotaku. Students play compulsively, then share the results on social media, says teacher Nick Fisher. “When you mix in the fact that you have to Snapchat every ‘dub’ (win) you get or Snapchat your friends losing it merges two of the biggest distractions in school . . . I would say Snapchat is a bigger issue than games. But Fortnite marries the two of them

Should schools ban spiral notebooks? After all, writes Thomas Arnett of the Christensen Institute, students often use them “to scribble or doodle, pass messages to their friends, or construct wads, planes, and spitball projectiles.” They can be a distraction. digital distraction, Arnett writes. A study found college students allowed to use computers in class earned lower scores on their final exams than students in classes where laptops were forbidden. Like spiral notebooks,

French schools will ban cell phones reports Henry Samuel in The Telegraph. In addition to a classroom ban, students will not be allowed to use cell phones at breaks, lunch times and between lessons. About 93 per cent of 12 to 17-year-olds in France own mobile phones. “These days the children don’t play at break time anymore, they are just all in front of their smartphones and from an educational point of view that’s a problem,” said Jean-Michel Blanquer, the French education

The average K-4 student is distracted more than a quarter of the time, according to a 2016 paper, Off-task behavior in elementary school children, reports Hechinger’s Jill Barshay. Students’ attention was most likely to drift during whole-class instruction and when an activity went longer than 10 minutes, writes Barshay. A quarter of instructional activities lasted longer than 17 minutes — longer than the average adult attention span of 15 minutes — said co-author Karrie Good

Bringing a laptop to class is a mistake, writes Cindi May in Scientific American, citing Michigan State research. Although computer use during class may create the illusion of enhanced engagement with course content, it more often reflects engagement with social media, YouTube videos, instant messaging, and other nonacademic content. This self-inflicted distraction comes at a cost, as students are spending up to one-third of valuable (and costly) class time zoned out, and the

Using a laptop to take notes in a college lecture classes is linked to lower grades — especially for weaker students — in two new studies, reports Dan Willingham. #distraction #laptops #lectures