Are you even listening!?

It is very hard to concentrate in a classroom that allows you to have your laptop out and even have a cell phone on the table. It's a given that you should always be listening and not texting your friends or chatting online, but students tend to veer off and get distracted when using other mediums besides the traditional lecture and note taking class. 

      I for one am a product of this technological mixture. Having my iPhone on me and my lap top open is very distracting, but I consider myself to be a great multi-tasker and being a waiter for 3 years now helps me hone in on that ability. I'm not saying I close the professor out completely because I really do listen and think about what the discussion is about. I think that people can do multiple things at a time and be successful at getting those tasks accomplished. Noted, you'll forget small specific details at times, but for the most part the broad topic or task is done. Having a good attention to detail is a very good character trait to master. The professor from the article Attention Literacy wrote, "it's that I want my students to learn that attention is a skill that must be learned, shaped, practiced; this skill must evolve if we are to evolve." Why don't teachers enforce attention a little more? why don't they try and work with the students to get them more engaged in the discussion? An article i read talks about President Obama's note on how distracting social media is in the classroom. That professor found a way to use these attention hogs as a positive tool.