【文稿】大学手机收纳袋

John Artman: With mobile devices becoming so popular, people joke that the distance between life and death isn't as far as the distance between people while staring at their phones. Increasingly, we see this happening even in college classrooms. To combat this rising tide of inattention, the Management Department of the Luoyang Institute of Engineering has taken matters into their own hands. Now, students must put their phones into storage bags before the class even starts. So before we look at what the Luoyang Institute of Engineering has done, how serious is the staring at your phone all the time of problem in universities? Amy Daml: I’m not sure this is so different from way it back in the day, when grandma Amy was in university and we used to do crossword puzzles and sudoku , you know, I think it’s exactly the same thing. John: Or doodle. I used to doodle a lot. Amy: You used to doodle? Okay. John: Not diddle, but doodle. Zhou Heyang: Oh god. Amy: I think everybody… college students always find a way to screw around with your time in class whether it’s… you know just have a perfect device helps you do it. ZHY: Yeah, totally, I think people daydream. They… well, college students they just don’t really want to just focus on the books any more since that’s what you have been doing all your life in China, I guess. John: But this isn’t the point that’s going to the university and going into the classrooms for to you to pay attention, I mean that you are paying for, right? ZHY: Totally, but a lot of the times when you are just imagining you in the shoes of a college student, often I think for Chinese college students, it’s just like freedom after years of being, you know, supervised by your teacher and parents all the time, now you have the freedom to do whatever you want. And then people just feel like they have the time to throw around. But that being said, when I first saw this, I just thought, why are we… are we talking about college students? I mean this should be something that high school students or teachers do, I think. I think we you are in college, you are a young adult. Shouldn’t you be, you know, grown up, more grown up than this? John: No! Amy: You’re a young adult, but just barely a young adult, a very young adult, I mean. I remember going to college, and I was like, “Woohoo! I’m out of my parents’ house, and finally I don’t have the try so hard, and I can do ever I want. My classes don’t even start until 11 o’clock, like if I’m gonna go them at all.” You know, it was like this world opened up to me. I had all these choices. And it takes you while as a young adult to be disciplined enough to choose the best thing for yourself. John: Well, also I think it’s a little bit different in terms of Chinese culture, especially with the relationship to technology. It does seem that in general, compared to the US, these new, newer technologies get picked up really, really quickly. And I think that, yeah portable screens, as my mother would call them, are becoming a problem around the world, but especially in China and other Asian cultures, to be honest, the portable screen is… it just kind of sucks people… sucks people’s soul away. They’re there, but they’re not really there. ZHY: But still you are a young adult, that’s, you know, getting your hands onto the device in the first place, and allowing themselves to get sucked into it. John: So blame the parents. Don’t buy the phone, right? Amy: Well, I mean, I would tend to agree with John. I think that this is much more of a technology focused culture than back in the States. At home, you know, we have like, come up with some social rules about when it acceptable to use your iPad, your iPhone or whatever, and so we know that when you go into a movie, you shut your phone off, when you go into class, you shut your phone off, you know, or at least you put it on silence so that the teacher doesn’t catch you to playing games. ZHY: Yeah, but do students actually do shut their phone off in American classrooms, I kind of doubt that. Amy: They put them on silent, I think. John: Well, I don’t know, I mean it’s been so long. Amy and I are so old now. But, seriously because when I was in university, I just had like a little crappy, you know, Samsung feature phone. ZHY: And it doesn’t stop you from texting. John: All you could do was play Snake on it. Amy: Yeah John: But so we’ve gone off on a bit tangent here, but to bring it back, let’s take a look at what the Luoyang Institute of Engineering has done. So again, you have to put your cell phone into a bag before class starts. Do you think this is going to work in terms of attention and getting them to focus on their school work? Amy: Well, so they started this project on April 3, it has even been a week yet, so there’s plenty of time for it to succeed or to fail, but basically, the idea is that they bought a big that I image like a shoe storage a kind of thing, and then you each got a pocket, and then you stick your phone in the pocket at the beginning of the class, you can get it back at the end of the class, but basically you have to voluntarily surrender your phone during class time. ZHY: So do you have to? I think if people who are willing to do so can have it done Yeah, so I guess for those already pretty disciplined, I would say, to be willing to give up their phone during class, then they can do it. I think that is a good way to just physically keep it away from you, then you kind of have to focus on whatever you should be doing. But that doesn’t always work, because for those who want to daydream, I don’t think put your phone away will stop you.