A couple of months ago I started experimenting with the use of Twitter and other social media in my wired college classrooms. Meanwhile, out in California, Howard Rheingold was exploring the question of wired attention spans with his UC Berkeley social media class. Rheingold turned these explorations into a series of compelling vlog posts called “Training Attention.”
All of this got me thinking about the nature of engagement in a wired world. It struck me that we’re in need of some form of scaffolding for particpatory and social media use. Specifically, the creation of some sort of attention scaffolding that transports the user beyond a state of random gratification and sensory overload.
These thoughts led to an inspiring conversation with fellow educator and webby Rabble.ca columnist Wayne Macphail. Macphail turned this dialogue into a Rabble column he called “May I halve your attention please?”
Continue reading ‘Attention rabble-rousing with Wayne Macphail’
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