Well, call me a dare devil but I thought I would take my new techno-multi-tasking self to a training session held this past weekend.  The result?  There are people out there that haven’t taken a class by Alec Couros!  At first I thought I would try and Twitter about during a session where they were asking for participant feedback, connections, and recommendations.  Appropriate Twitter time I thought.  Within minutes I was given “the look”.  You know the one – the “how dare you play around on your laptop when I am speaking at you” look.  Not wanting to rock the boat too much within the first 10 minutes of training, I slid my laptop to the side. 

I was continued to be spoken at for the next 60 minutes.  How I yearned to be doing something to engage my listening.  But, I didn’t dare slide the computer in front of me for fear of the “look”.  I wanted to let the presenters know that they lost my attention 40 minutes prior but I didn’t think they would be checking their IM or email at the present moment in time!

Then the day took a turn.  A new presenter was brought into the room who was going to teach us how to use a program on the computer that we would need to complete our training.  Instinct took over my body as I reached for my laptop and pulled it in front of me.  Then it happened.  “You won’t be needing your computers because then you won’t listen while I am talking to you.  I will show you what you need to do on the data projector and after you will work with a partner on a computer to work through what I just taught.”  Wha????  How can this be?  I raised my hand ready to protest but was shot down with the “look”.  My hand sunk to my table as I closed up my laptop.  I listened to the presentation and after found my partner.  Then we looked at each and asked the same question as most of the other participants, “So, what are we supposed to do?”

I just kept thinking how I could have been making my notes in Google Docs while following the presenter.  The time saved would have been @ 30 minutes as this was how long it took after the presentation to get all the participants on the right track. What message could I have sent to the presenter that what I was doing on my laptop was not going to distract others, interfere with his/her presentation or my learning of the topic?  How do we ease away from the fear of losing control in the learning environment?