Phones, FOMO and Focus: 10 Ways to Reclaim Student Attention

Student attention and classroom engagement can feel harder to hold when every laptop, phone, and smartwatch comes with an escape hatch. But the answer is not necessarily another device ban. In this episode of The What & Who of EDU, ten educators share practical teaching strategies for helping students focus, participate, and reconnect when attention wanders. Their approaches range from active learning and flexible pacing to device-free spaces, purposeful technology use, curiosity, belonging, and self-regulation.

The educators do not always agree, and that is part of the point. Better attention is less about finding one perfect phone policy and more about designing classrooms where students have something meaningful to do, a reason to care, and a way back when their focus drifts.

Brought to you by Macmillan Learning.

Episode Breakdown

[00:00] Phones, FOMO, and Focus

[01:14] Silence Your Own Notifications

[03:22] Stop Filling Every Minute

[05:42] Change the Container, Not the Content

[07:51] Make Attention Count

[10:57] Put the Phone to Work

[13:41] Teach From Everywhere

[15:47] Build a Device-Free Island