Use mindfulness training applications: You can practice training your power of attention with mindfulness applications like Headspace, Insight Timer, or Stop Think Breathe on your digital device. Even 10 minutes a day of focused practice can begin to strengthen your attention skills.
Notice and be with boredom: Be mindful during the restlessness of boredom, and rather than trying to medicate it with more stimulation and distraction from your phone, choose a healthier soothing activity, such as going for a walk, reading a book, taking a bath, or listening to music. You can also remind yourself that it’ s when you’ re in the state of boredom that your brain makes spontaneous connections leading to creative thought.
Share your knowledge( and your struggles): As teachers, consider ways to talk and teach students about what’ s happening to their brain and attention when accessing the Share your virtual world. Share your experience with technology and experience with mindfulness, and encourage students’ self-observation and technology and curiosity to discover their own experience. Help students make mindfulness. connections and insights into their learning progress. Support them by offering strategies and guidance, like those suggested above, if and when they want to move towards more awareness and control.
In terms of evolution, the digital world is a recent development for all of us, teachers and students alike. We are now in the process of learning about how best to use and manage this ever-present part of our lives, and in reality, the virtual and the physical worlds are one world of coexistence. Learning to be more mindful and applying a mindful lens to technology and how it affects our lives and learning empowers conscious use and choice. So instead of being overwhelmed or consumed by the everincreasing pull of digital distractions, the power of awareness can give us all the capacity and strength to make more balanced, life fulling choices.
References:
Carr, N. G.( 2010). The shallows: What the internet is doing to our brains. New York, NY: W. W. Norton.
Doyle, T. & Zakrajsek, T.( 2013). The new science of learning: How to learn in harmony with your brain. Sterling, VA: Stylus Publishing.
Pattakos, A.( with Covey, S.).( 2008). Prisoners of our thoughts: Viktor Frankl ' s principles for discovering meaning in life and work. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler.
Tang, Y. Y., Hölzel, B. K., & Posner, M. I.( 2015). The neuroscience of mindfulness meditation. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 16( 4), 213-225.