Avoiding the Clickable Links
Season 1- Episode #3
Welcome to Tick Tock Tech! In this episode, we are focusing on Technology and Connections and how technology can help and hinder personal connections.
In each episode, we will focus on a “fire” or a problem that educators and professionals may be struggling with. We will then focus on three options or tools for helping “put out the fire”.
"The link is, in a way, a technologically advanced form of a footnote. It's also, distraction-wise, a more violent form of a footnote. Where a footnote gives your brain a gentle nudge, the link gives it a yank. What's good about a link — its propulsive force — is also what's bad about it."- Nicholas Carr
In this episode, we will discuss the distraction and pull of the links embedded in our everyday online reading.
Summary of Discussion Points:
Timers
Movement breaks
Extensions such as “just read”
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Transcript
The link is, in a way, a technologically advanced form of a footnote. It's also distraction wise, a more violent form of a footnote, where a footnote gives your brain a gentle nudge, the link gives it a Yank. What's good about a link, its propulsive force is also what's bad about it.
Welcome to the tic tac tech podcast where we talk about all things education, tech and teacher happiness. Join hosts Anna cliff and Cassie frost as they share simple ideas to guide you and bring meaning to your day to day experiences.
So this is a quote from Nicholas Carr's website. Ironically enough, I found the website by clicking on a link in a different article. The article and Nicholas's studies focused on the way the internet interact interacts with our brain. So it suggests that the constant distractions and links in the articles and things we read can cause us to focus less on what we're reading. So this then can lead into more difficulties with concentration, and more shallow thoughts on what we read. Interestingly enough, Nicholas also has a book called shallow talking about how we interpret things that we're reading. And now that has now made it onto my reading list. So I'll let you know what I think about that after actually get it read. But that is going to be my new book on top of my reading list. So this week, our fire or the problem we're trying to solve, the fire we're gonna try to put out is the concept of the distraction and online reading. So personally, I struggle with reading on a screen. I don't really know why it just, it seems more distracting to me, I have to read things a little bit slower. I'm not sure if it's the screen, the links, maybe an easy distraction. But I do better with a print version, every time my comprehension is just better with a print version. So this week, what do we do if we need to read text online?
This is so fascinating to me. Cassie, I saw when you were saying all these distractions that we sometimes get with being online and all these clickable links, right? I mean, I even get distracted by ads. I don't know how many times I'm trying to read an article and an ad will pop up in the middle of the article, right. And so it really is frustrating. And it's hard to like, maintain your connection to what you're actually reading with all of these links that can take you somewhere else. So I love that. I mean, when I know that I really need to read something and read it for the comprehension piece of it. I still print my stuff off too. And I don't know if that's old school, or if that's just being smart with how we how we need to get get the material into our SAT, like how we learn material, right? And so, super fascinating. I think it'll, it'll be great for us to talk through some more of these ideas and come up with some solutions.
I would agree. And I know it's not great for like, printer paper and like the whole environmental thing, but paper just works better for me. So before we get into your solutions, because you're going to come up with some um, how's your week? How are things going in your world?
Gosh, oh my gosh, well, yeah, you know, we're in we're in quarantine right now. So that's, you know, we think about, you know, the pandemic people once people got vaccinated, we thought it was kind of going to be slowing down and it feels like it hasn't so that's it. It's a tough one with with kids. And luckily, we felt, you know, we're all okay. And we're all be healthy. So we're very fortunate in our situation. But yeah, it's just been just been crazy, right? How about you, Cassie, if
you know, I'm kind of in the same boat, we're just actually ending a quarantine here. And we don't actually live anywhere near each other. I know, we did not spread this back and forth here. But my daughter had tested positive again, she's great, but we kind of were in that same boat, we're just kind of ending. You're starting your quarantine, we're ending ours here. And then like, the week before Thanksgiving, you know, in the schools, everybody's trying to kind of get things figured out for this next month. So there's definitely been a lot of needs. It's been really busy. So everything's good, but it feels like everything's kind of accelerating. In our, my world, you know, my professional world, my personal world, it just seems like everything's really busy right now. And there's a lot of needs. But I will also say, No, we're recording this before it's gonna release because this one actually gets released right before Christmas. But I will tell you when we're recording this before Thanksgiving. Um, our Christmas trees are up. So that's something like pretty lights. So I'm enjoying that.
Yeah, very nice. We just got some more decorations up this weekend as well. Oh, yeah. I
used to be an after Thanksgiving person. And now I've given up.
Yeah, yeah. Especially when you have kids. I think it makes sense, right?
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And mine goes off to college. So like, this is the last year that we can kind of do it early. So I'm like, You know what? It's all good.
Yeah, absolutely. All right. So let's get to talking about a couple of solutions to all those clickable links. Like to me, I've got to figure out some better ways to make it through an article or anything that I'm trying to read online, when there's all those distractions. So how can we do that, um, one thing that I've done before is I got back to that previous episode where we talked about timers on our phones, and, and talked about using some of those those options that you're built in, to prevent yourself from going too far with it setting up making it so you can't be looking at it late at night, or it's you have a certain amount of time on Facebook or social media, like you can set all those limits on your phone, if that's where you're accessing your material. And the other thing that I often do, which is really helpful is I set on my watch to actually set timers. But let's schedule movement breaks. So scheduling time that I just get up and go for a walk. And it kind of distracts me enough to the point where I come back and refocus on the things I actually have to get done. So that's a really also like a really helpful tool for me. How about you, Cassie? Do you have any that that Yeah.
So I'm going to go a little bit different. So you want with kind of that like self control timers, movement breaks. And I'm going to say that sometimes that's just not enough for me, because when I come back that link still there. And that's I'm just going to own that one. So I'm going to add for solution number three, using some of these extensions that are out there. And there's a lot of different ones. One of the more simple that I've worked with, if you are reading on a Chrome browser is an extension called just read. And I will link that into our episode notes on the website as well. But what that actually does is it will get rid of the extra stuff on the website. So those advertisements, you're talking about all those extra things, it will hide all of that. And it will just give you the article. So it gets rid of all of the extra pictures, the stuff on the sides. Unfortunately, it doesn't necessarily get rid of the links in the articles. And that's actually one of the things that the author of the quote from the beginning was talking about was, you know, the links in the reading can distract you. Um, but for me, at least getting rid of the extra ones on the sides really helps. Because usually those are the ones with the pretty pictures. Kids is just read free. Just read is a free extension. Oh, that's awesome. Yeah, and it just, it just gets rid of all of the extra stuff and just gives you the article right down the middle. So the live links are still there if they're part of the article, but a lot of that extra stuff is gone. So in addition to some self control, which is what you know, we all need a little bit more of, um, you know, be able to click a link when you first open an article. If I can't print it, that's usually my go to.
Awesome. So going back to those solutions, I think we just you just kind of recap them Cassie like we we have timers, we have ideas from taking movement breaks, we can use extensions that are built into our devices or add them through Google Chrome store. There's I know Apple has other extensions too. And other features and a lot of them are free out there things that can help us get around that. So really great ideas.
And actually as you just said that I happen to think if you are or an Apple user and like an iPhone user, or you're using Safari, Safari web browser will actually do that right built into the browser. And I often forget that it does that because I tend to live more in Chrome, that Safari will actually do that built in without an add on, I think is
cool. Yes. Yes. That's You're right. That is very true.
I don't remember to do it, though. But I know it's there.
Yes, right. Okay,
so this episode, we're gonna kind of start something new. Because you know what we're all stressed out. There's a lot going on. And as you probably have guessed, Anna, and I collaborate on this. And we kind of know, you know, what our fires are going to be, we definitely challenge each other to come up with those solutions. But a lot of this we see in advance. So we've decided to make our lives a little more fun, and maybe give you guys something fun, too. We're going to start our brighten my day challenge. And we're just going to kind of alternate each episode with sharing something new or exciting with each other. And with you, the listeners, that's just kind of something fun, something cool to try something that's going on in the world. Just kind of a fun thing. So I get to launch that today. So I'm pretty excited about it. I kind of like want to ask you like what you think it could be? Like,
I Well, as you're saying, I'm like, Oh my gosh, I have to think about some more my brighten my day challenges. And I was like, Oh my gosh, Cassie is gonna have such a good one right now. It's gonna be amazing.
I don't know. I don't know if I will or not. But I will tell you I was so excited when I looked up and what day this episode is going to be released because it's going to be released really soon. And the day that this is released, Guess what day it is?
Oh, I hope it's like a donut day or something. Or like,
in my opinion, it's even better. And maybe I'm the only one but for those of you that are not winter fans, not shorten day fans, you'll be excited to know today, December 21 Is the winter solstice. Today is the shortest day of the year. Ah, so if you live in the northern hemisphere, today is the shortest day of the year meaning tomorrow you will start getting more sunshine. And this day makes me happy.
Oh my gosh, that is awesome. That is such a good feeling coming up because as we're recording this we know it's it's not that way. And so the day that this is going to be released is going to be such a brightening day for real brightening tomorrow.
Yeah. And it's not even that far away. Like we're not recording this this far in advance like it's coming. Like I love summer days, you could be grilling out at like nine o'clock at night. And right now like we're in Wisconsin. It's dark by like 430. So I am so excited. So I went really literal with the brighten my day because tomorrow, they brightens longer check that out.
That's awesome. I love it.
I'm setting the bar super high. Yes, yes. Yeah, I'm bringing the sun. You can't get much better than that. No, that's
amazing. Love it.
Yeah, next episode, you better bring it. Okay, on that note, thank you for joining us for another episode of tick tock tech. You can find links to information discussed in today's episode along with references on our website. Don't forget to like, subscribe and share this podcast so you don't miss any tips and tricks, and so your fellow educators can join in the fun.