Classroom Management Challenges

     According to the article, "Freedom, Digital Distraction, and Control", my classroom development atmosphere would best relate to control by technology.  In my previous job, every teacher had an iPad.  During "PD meetings," some teachers would present new material to the staff.  During that time, they would say, "Apples up," meaning, make your iPad go to sleep so you are paying attention.  If you did not, they would call you out and try to make you feel bad.  I HATED it. A lot of teachers were turned away and instead of listening to the new material, the teachers would zone out.
     I now work at a building where every teacher gets a laptop during faculty meetings.  The principal is aware enough to understand that as teachers, we can multitask.  He starts a blog every meeting from todaysmeet.com, and we are blogging to each other and emailing, etc.  He never once tells us to close our laptops.  I cannot even describe the climate in our meetings.  Everybody loves being there and we are not being treated like students.  It has actually made me want to pay more attention and give him the respect that he gives me.  I run my classroom the same way.  I make sure the technology students are using empowers them and drives them enough to where they do not have time or even want to stray (although, some still do).
     With all of that being said, I think moving my classroom to the self-control classroom atmosphere would be easy.  We all have to realize that students' attention spans are only as long as minutes in their age.  Therefore, even a high school senior will not want to pay attention to a single technology-driven assignment longer than 20 minutes.  Therefore, them giving themselves a "technology-break" and maybe playing a game for two minutes should not be that big of an issue, as long as they get back on task.  I think if students know exactly what is expected out of them, and they know the timelines, their work will still get done.  The worst thing we could do is drive them away from the technology at their fingertips.