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Slow Down and Learn, Hurry Up and Understand: Time-Management in the Computer Room

Arnold Pulda
Doherty Memorial High School & Middle School
Worcester, Massachusetts

All teachers know that the management of time in the classroom is a skill that must be mastered. Good teachers use the clock efficiently; less-effective teachers seem to be used and even abused by the clock, surprised when the bell rings, calling out the homework assignment to the backs of students as they hurry down the hallway to their next class. Proper management of time is equally important when the teacher brings her students to the computer room, of course. In my experience I have found that some of the traditional time-management rules that I apply in the classroom work just as well in the computer room, while others must be adjusted to suit the specific needs of the environment. In this article I will discuss some of those special situations and offer some suggestions on how to deal with them.

I teach in a public high school and middle school, but through various associations and networks I have quite a bit of contact with colleagues who teach at the college level. I have read quite a bit about what's come to be called the "digital divide" over the last few years, and I agree that all teachers at all levels should be sensitive to the issues relating to that digital divide - inequitable and uneven student access to technology in schools. But the more I talk with my friends who teach in college, the more I am beginning to believe that there is another significant "digital divide," and that is between use of and application of the tools of technology in college vs. the way that students and teachers in public high schools and middle schools use and apply them.

When I go to conferences, meetings or workshops dealing with technology and education - sometimes I attend, sometimes I present and mentor - where the attendees comprise a mixed group of college and pre-college teachers, it often seems that there are two different languages being spoken, two entirely different subjects being addressed. Educators at the college level are often presenting about and discussing pedagogy, web site content, inquiry assignments, and other such subjects. Many of which are somewhat oxymoronic - such as Scarce Abundance, Active Passivity, and the like. Recently I was at such a meeting where the majority of attendees were college teachers, and the agenda was something like that. Two or three of us there were high school or middle school teachers though, and we found each other. We ended up in an excited discussion of: mouse balls. Yes, that's no typo: mouse balls. We were simply comparing notes on what we do when the students steal the mouse balls. We also exchanged ideas on maintenance of hardware, Acceptable Use Policies, software that blocks inappropriate sites on the Internet, and other similar subjects of the nuts-and-bolts variety. College teachers don't seem to have the need or desire to address such issues. Whether they don't need to - that is, that college students just don't steal mouse balls or try to access inappropriate web sites -- or whether they just don't want to, I'm not sure. But what we high-school teachers ended up talking about, mostly, after we got through with mouse balls, was time.

• How to manage time with students in the computer lab?
• How to schedule the extent of a lesson plan?
• How to create a lesson or project while taking into account the attention span of teenage students?

These are some of the items I'd like to deal with, keeping in mind that my preferences, practices, and procedures are those of one teacher in one computer room in one school. The circumstances for other teachers elsewhere may vary widely from mine; what works for me may fall flat under a different schedule, with other students, with different resources.

Time concerns all of us, everywhere, always - but I firmly believe that teachers in public schools are ruled by the clock to a greater extent than teachers elsewhere or even people working in the private sector. Recently a friend of mine, an accountant, asked me how much time I have for lunch, and I answered "Twenty-two minutes." He laughed a little bit and inquired as to how I could be so precise in this measurement. A teacher knows the answer, though: it's not "About a half-hour," or anything like that: it's simply 22 minutes, no more (no need to say, "And no less"). So it is when someone asks me when my workday ends: after I get past the temptation to say "Never," I reply, "One forty-three." Precision. The bell.

There is no relief from this precision in the computer room, on the Internet. There should be, it seems, for the reasons that make the Internet such a wonderful resource for teaching and learning: the sheer abundance of information, and the exciting prospect of looking for and finding quality web sites that lead to other worthwhile sites. The world's biggest library, all just 18 inches in front of the students' noses. Certainly the clock should be off the wall when we're using such a resource. But it isn't. The bell still rings, and it's going to ring even if the student has just found that perfect site, the document that just begs for close reading and analysis, that gorgeous jpeg image of Seward's cancelled check written in payment for Alaska, or Einstein's letter to Roosevelt, or Jackie Robinson's note to Branch Rickey.

My own experience with the Internet, and everything that I have read and heard and valued about using it for education, has taught me that the Internet is a slow medium. The content requires focused attention; the best material there needs careful analysis, deliberate reading and looking; links to related material should be followed freely, and links from that web site should be followed yet further, with no or little heed to the passage of time. My friends who teach in college tell me that their students can and do conduct online research just that way, so the teachers themselves encourage - even require - their students to research deep and wide. If they don't finish during class time, then they can return to their wired dorms and/or their wired library to continue their work. I encourage my students likewise, but within limits - because the bell is going to ring, and the student may not have a computer at home, or may not be able to access one of the half-dozen computers in the media center, or he may not have a free period during the day to even get to one of those computers in school. So time immediately intervenes in the execution of the lesson. And I find that, after my nice speech about the virtues of close reading and deliberate analysis, I sometimes have to follow up with another one of the opposite variety: please hurry up a little bit, students, because we won't be able to return to the computer lab to continue this lesson, it's booked solid for a week. Whatever happened to the slow medium?