How to Rejuvenate In-Person Interactions and 'the Commons' in Schools… Through an App

Welcome to the Future of Education. And now here's your host, Michael Horn.

Welcome to the Future of Education. I'm Michael Horn. You're joining the show where we're dedicated to creating a world in which all individuals can build their passions, fulfill their potential, and live lives of purpose. And to help us think through that, today we have the co founders of the Commons app, as they call it, airplane mode for schools. We're going to find out a lot about that and more in this conversation. Conversation that I expect to go in a number of places. But first let me say hi to our guests and the co founders of the Commons app, Shannon Godfrey and Julia Gustafson. Julia, Shannon, great to see you. Thanks so much for being here.

Yes, thanks for having us on. We're excited for the conversation. Thanks, Michael.

I'm looking forward to it as well. And I'll give folks a little bit of background on how we got here, which is I had written a piece with an argument that I made a few times, but a lot of my audience probably saw that in my judgment, a lot of the bans right now on cell phones, smartphones in particular in schools, while they do have an education use case clause, escape valve, if you will, in many cases, in my judgment they create a worrisome trend where, yes, in many cases phones are huge distractions and I would ban them and so forth from my individual classroom or use cases. And there are these moments, there are these teachers, there are these learning models who have created tremendously productive uses with those phones to really, actually engage and create a more active learning environment than they otherwise would. And I reflected on my own teaching practice at Harvard where for the most part it's a phone free classroom. We are having Socratic conversation, it's pretty active. And then every once in a while we have checks for understanding or various polls to set up debates and things of that nature. And I say bring out your phones or your laptops. Let's let, let's, you know, do a quick pulse check here. And then that allows the class to, to, to move accordingly. And my concern being, hey, it only takes one person to say that's not actually educational use case. And all of a sudden you have major nightmare on the hands of teachers. And so then, Shannon, you and I got connected through that because you basically said like, all well and good, Michael, but there's a way to get beyond the sort of all or nothing that we're looking at through actually a technology solution. And I said, wow, that's fascinating. I want to, I want to Learn more. And so here we are in this conversation and so maybe I'll let you all jump in with that. And Shannon, maybe you take it first. Just the Commons app, what is it? How did you know? When did you create it? How does it work? What is it doing?

Yeah, I appreciate that. So the Commons app, just a little bit of background and I'm sure we'll dive more into our backgrounds and what, what really, you know, created the commons. But Julia and I both had spent many times and working with schools on implementing phone free solutions across their schools, supporting schools with their phone policies, the state mandates that are coming out and ultimately, you know, our backgrounds combined and really thinking about some of these nuances that you're bringing up. There's so many different exceptions and it's not black and white on how we can minimize the distractions. I think that's one thing that came forward to both of us on are the existing solutions really allowing that flexibility to adapt to the school cultures and the school needs based on innovative academic technology that is really being used or medical or what whatnot throughout the day. On the other side of it, you know, are we actually developing students in learning the skill sets on being able to manage their phones only in the school day, but beyond the school walls and impulse control, self regulation, decision making, these are all skills that students are developing today and is so critical that they're developing that when they're utilizing technology as well. And we felt that that was, was also a gap that we are seeing with existing solutions. So as you mentioned, the Commons is an airplane mode for schools. It's intended to be a really simple solution that allows us to minimize distractions during the day. The most distracting apps that are hijacking attention and really causing the disruption and the lack of focus during the school day, that's really what we're able to block. Our application automatically activates when students step foot on campus. We're using proven sciences with behavioral economics and how we're designing the app to help make the right choice, the easy choice for our students so that they can keep their phones down. We can help schools support their phone policies and the state mandates that are out on reducing those distractions. But we're also taking it a step further, further on being able to support students and really developing and putting into practice the ability to learn self regulation, impulse control and have that healthier relationship with their technology and specifically their phone so that they can function in the school that way. But also beyond the school walls, into higher ed, into their career over the weekend on really being able to, to learn time, place and manner of their technology and specifically their phone in this case.

Well, so maybe that's a good. There's a lot of things you just said that I want to unpack here, but maybe this is a good place to bring in the backgrounds of both of you into this. And Julia, perhaps start with you because I know a large part of the reason this has become such a conversation is actually not the education use case, but it's the observations around the health challenges that a lot of teenagers, teenage girls in particular, based on a lot of the correlation research at this point, showing a lot of detrimental health impacts. Right. Social media in particular on these smartphones, you come to this, as I understand it from a public health perspective. So talk about how that has informed your own background and how that has informed the development of the commons.

Yeah, yeah, thank you for the question. Like you said, I have a background in public health and public policy and I was specifically have focused on using behavioral economics to help shape, inform people's behavior, to make the right choice, the easy choice, or in this case the healthier choice. Getting into how this all formulated into the Commons, I was working at the Stanford Prevention Research center all on a project around well being, what contributes to it, what detracts from it. And it turns out the number one thing that influences people's well being is actually in person, social connectedness, the real relationships that they're having with individuals. And this was also at the same time that the algorithm based social media apps started showing up on phones, the infinite scroll. And so you really couldn't separate the conversation between somebody's well being and their technology use mixed with having, you know, a lived real world experience where I was at a restaurant with my friends and I looked up and everyone else was still on their phones. Um, so it was that twilight zone moment where as you know in education, you can theorize about something all you want and then in the moment, in practice, sometimes it shows up right in your face. And so that was the moment that I wanted to take what I was working on at the Stanford Prevention Research center and do something in practice with it. And so I spent from 2018 all the way through till the present working with schools on student cell phone policies and way to reduce those distractions. And I think one thing just echoing what Shannon said is that through the years of working with schools on very much black and white solutions, and I would say very much a whiplash effect from unfettered access to trying to do something about it and take action. Which the easy button for that and the surrender button is to ban it and lock it away. And so that is not the wrong move, but it's only the first move in this evolution because some of the unintended consequences that we're seeing right now is that there, you know, in the classroom, teachers actually want to be able to use the phone for really cool ways to engage more deeply. And students, when a phone is locked away and they pick it up, they're getting bombarded with 200 notifications from social media. Right.

That's just pent up over the course of the day.

Yep. And so the one app that the teacher wanted them to open for the academic purpose is lost in that swirl, that rebound consumption of other notifications. And so locking phones away or pretending they don't exist is not really the solution here. It's how do we have more consistent guardrails on things while also having the education around it? And I think that's a huge thing that's missing right now is that when you treat something that treats something as that it's scary or shouldn't be accessed, we're just pushing it to the side and we're not educating around it. And I'm just folding this all into my public health experience. When you think about substance use, sex education and mental health, those are all things that initially started out as abstinence based or just say no or pretend it doesn't exist. And now schools have adopted them around education models so that when faced with these bigger decisions or choices that they need to make or situations in the future, that students are equipped with the skills and knowledge in their toolbox in order to make the right choice. And cell phones are now getting pushed into that equation and most specifically around social media apps and gaming applications.

Super interesting. Okay, Shannon, let's go to your background and how you came into this then and you all partnered up to create this.

Yeah, absolutely. So my background has been in education technology and I've seen the positive impacts of how utilizing technology in the classroom can aid in student success. And that is something, you know, that I think is really phenomenal with the evolution of technology in general. When it's used appropriately as a tool not to replace education, not to replace our teachers, but when it be incorporated into the classroom, the ability to really use data and insights to help individual students be more prepared, or the repetition that you get, some of it being a little bit more fun and conforming to what students are used to in life, you know, and those are the, the beauties of where technology can be really, really impactful. And then in general, you know, how much we appreciate technology, the fact that we can even have this podcast all being in three different places. It's technology is here to stay and it' advancing. And so that's something that we need to be able to adapt and conform to. And being able to put that into our classrooms is, is really critical as well. With some of those caveats, right, of not fully being a replacement or a crutch and making sure that we're utilizing it appropriately. But that was my background. And so when Julia and I were working, you know, helping schools go phone free and collaborating together on this, I think as we came back together on thinking about, you know, what worked really well and where are their opportunities, our backgrounds really collided in a positive way. Can technology solve a tech issue and be a more modern day solution? And what I love about the technology side of it is some of the areas that we found really challenging for our schools. How do schools identify students that are circumventing, you know, this, this policy that is in place? Because ultimately it is really difficult for students when they have created bad habits of impulse control, grabbing their phone for no reason or those notifications hitting them. You know, it, it is very much a dopamine release. It's an addiction for some of us. And so how do we help schools identify those students that are circumventing it? Because it's not a matter of are they going to. No matter what solution they are, they are, when are they going to, and how do you correct it so that your policies can be more impactful from a school standpoint and accountability. But as leaders for the school, we can focus our time on the right students that might be falling off task. That's something we're missing with physical solutions. We're either relying way too much on teachers being the phone police and managing it and then they're not teaching. And that's another issue in itself because teachers are leaving this profession, unfortunately, due to some of these other behavioral incidents and burdens put on them where they can't just be teachers any longer. So how do we remove teachers from being phone police? How do we help our administrators identify the students that we need to maybe support that are off task. That's really difficult to do with a physical solution or a policy only solution. That's where technology can really, really come to life. And then when we think about what if newer technology continues to evolve where it's mobile, optimized and the better experiences the mobile device or the only solution out there for students is a mobile device or to unlock the laptop you have to use the mobile device. It's, you know, as this evolution starts to take shape, how do we start to adapt and mold to that particular school's environment or that teacher's environment within the classroom? Again, it's really hard to do that in a policy only or physical based solution. But with technology it has this ability to adapt and to change. And so that's where my background really came in, mirrored with Julia's background on the behavioral sciences. Well, if we're going to do technology, how do we design it in a way that does make it really simple for students to make the right choice, the easy choice. And that's where we were able to infuse our two worlds together to really come out with the commons and something that just didn't exist in the market today.

Gotcha. So let me make sure I have. It sounds like there's sort of two aspects then of the solution that you all have built. One of them, if I'm understanding and maybe we'll start here to clarify because I, I don't think I have a full grasp of it is it's really around. A lockdown may be the wrong word, but it's like literally taking certain things off the table or at least making it transparent when a student is going off it. Help me understand what that part of it looks like where you're reducing what a student can actually do before we get into the behavioral sciences part of it, I think where there's a set of incentives around when they even do pick it up. What, what, what, what they're sort of motivated to do.

Yeah. I'm going to start the response to your question just with a study because the study was actually very instrumental in how we developed our technology. So JAMA Pediatrics now for two years in a row has released studies that show that despite having active student cell phone policies in place, students are still spending an hour and a half of every single school day on average on their cell phones. So that's equate. We did the math because we are curious. That's one month of teaching and learning time down the drain per student every school year because of cell phone use. So what's cool about that study? Not that it's like super, right?

Not the great outcome of the study,

but yeah, what the cool part of it is that they dug deeper and they looked at what students were spending that hour and a half of their time during the school Day on, maybe they are on academic apps. And in that way it's not a waste of time. Well, it turns out that the hour and a half that's spent on the phone during the school day is on social media, gaming, YouTube and other algorithm driven apps that are designed to hijack attention, not on academic apps and not the text home to mom or dad because soccer's canceled or whatever. So knowing that information that was really pivotal in how Shannon and I decided to design the commons because we realized there are a subset of apps that are actually extremely useful during the day, like Google Authenticator to get into your Chromebook Duolingo and language class is really beneficial. Google Classroom to submit assignments during the day, during block periods. And those aren't what is derailing the focus and attention from our students. And so when we designed our app, we talked and we're like, we don't want a total lockdown of the phone. We do want students to be able to recognize when the appropriate time or places to use some of these academic apps or medical apps that they potentially need to have access to. Rather, it's these highly addictive applications that are the one really causing the disruption during the school day. And those are the ones that the commons app automatically blocks as students come into campus. Their phone could be in their backpack, their pocket, they could be on it. But our app is triggered through a geofence technology. As students come into campus, it runs silently in the background all day. Students don't need to do anything. Teachers don't need to do anything. They don't need to spend the precious minutes at the beginning or end of class shuffling around phones or putting them in caddies. And at the end of the day the app simply releases by the time bound of our geofence or if they cross that geofence line.

So it doesn't matter what techno like, they don't have to register the phone. It's literally really like whatever phone or technology you showed up with. When you're in this perimeter, you're not going to get a Facebook notification or whatever it might be.

Yeah, that's the, that's the cool part. It is a one time app download, right where they then pair their app to the school. But every day beyond that it's automatic and runs in the background. And that's where infusing the science of behavioral economics, making the right choice, the easy choice was intentionally designed. If you have to continuously remember to take out your phone and tap it or do this or that, it's just, it's Too hard. It's a barrier. We want the default choice to be the choice that the school wants to change the culture, right? So that's staying off your phone, staying off the distractions on it. And that's how we made it the easy choice. And so, you know, it's not a matter of if, but when students decide they want to try to circumvent this app, right. It's like doing a large scale behavior change for hundreds or maybe thousands of students at once. If, when a school does this. And so it's only a matter of time before students try to circumvent this or test the limits. And so that's where we, with choice architecture, we decided to put in little nudges for the students. And so if they swipe away the Commons app and go on their phone, we send them a notification that says, oh, you're at school right now. Time to put your phone away and focus. If they decide to turn off one of the necessary settings that the Commons needs to run, we actually send them another nudge that says, oops, looks like something's off. Here's your opportunity to turn it back on. And we will redirect them to the page so they can make the right choice to turn that setting back on. Always giving students the choice, right? That's a huge part of this. If they choose the wrong thing, which is to keep the setting off, that's when we notify them that we've let the administration know that their app is not working. And that's when the administration gets a notification that Michael has now turned off his app and he probably needs a little bit of a follow up.

Gotcha. And I guess if I get a new device or I sneak a new device in that it doesn't have the app on it, that's a teacher is going to notice, hey, Michael's a little more distracted in the hallways in the moment. Let's make sure that this is actually has the app on it and running. Is that the idea?

Yeah, that's exactly right. And, and also when you're doing this as a social norm, right, Tier one, every student's doing this. It's much more obvious when the phone is out. And so I think the other important aspect to note is when we implement with the school, we're not replacing their phone policy. It's not the commons isn't the policy. They still have a policy where the Commons fits into that as part of the requirements of the policy. So for most of our schools, they still have no phones allowed. Bell To Bell, the intention is to have them put away and we're making it easier to put away because those distractions or those impulse, they're not coming to the student. But if it is used for that academic purpose in the classroom, the teacher can also rest assure that by using innovative tech, my students aren't going to be distracted by those other, you know, hijacking attention seeking applications. That's really what we're also providing. But if the students are circumventing or making it obvious, the expectations are set with the students through the policy, you get a new device, you need to come and get this set up. If you circumvent so many times, there may be some sort of, you know, consequence or something where at some point do you need additional support because you can't handle this. That's where, you know, the, the school and their resources can really step in and partner with the parents, which I think is really important to this, to really help the student get off track because most likely the phone is often a root cause to other issues. So now when we can look at the data of the phone, phone use and circumventing the app, what else is happening with the student? Their tardy or their attendance overall, which we know is a major issue right now in the K 12 sector, their grades, their behavioral incidents. Like what else is happening with the student? Is the phone a portion of that, you know, the puzzle that's missing right now to know so that we can help get that student back on track?

It seems like there are other aspects of this, that, that Julia, you mentioned some of the behavioral science elements of it and so forth, but it seems like there's other parts of that layered into the experience as well. Can you talk about what, what those other aspects are and how it really makes the right choice, the easy choice?

Yeah, yeah. You know, just adding on to it. It's like the automatic activation is huge in here because people will always default to what's easiest and, and what the default settings are. So actually, you know, this is science that Apple uses to make the experience on the iPhone so enjoyable. Right. And it's like there are certain behaviors that they want you to do on the phone and those are the default settings. You have to intentionally as a user go in and try to set different settings to make it something else. But that is why automatic activation of our app is so important. Because if people had to do an extra step to even turn it on at the beginning of the day, that's the biggest point of friction to actually making A policy and program successful at the beginning. But also we want this to be sustainable beyond the first couple months of implementation. So how do you think about something long term? It needs to be easy. And so that automatic activation was a huge portion of that for us. But it's always about allowing that end user to make the choices at the end of the day and be able to learn that behavior. So that's where we, we layer in some of those nudges to ensure that it is the right choice that they're making. They are able to put their phone down in the appropriate time, place and manner. And then if they're not doing that, we send them a simple reminder. And like Shannon said before, also how do you make it a little fun? How can we like send them little reminders here and there and we put a phone use tracker on there so they can see how much time they've actually been spending spending on their phone during the day. Because when you think about behavior change, if you're always in that pre contemplation stage and you don't actually know that what's going on is an issue, you're never going to get to that awareness stage, which is the first step in actually making a true behavior change. So the minute our students understand that they're having rebound consumption, that they're spending 45 minutes of a school day on their phone, that's actually a huge win because they're now aware of that. And beyond our technology, we do also support our schools with a four module digital citizenship curriculum that really layers in the why behind this, which is so important when you think of intrinsic motivation on this thing. That's really a true behavior change. And so we see a lot of success when our schools layer in the why behind it and that education component as well as the commons as a guardrail to help make those choices a little bit easier for the students.

I'm curious about that last piece. And it's more from what I can imagine some people listening, the devil's advocate part of this, which is like they'd say, ah, schools, you know, they have so much on their plates already now. They're these habits of success also like, oh gosh, yes, there's this rebound. I had never heard it actually. Ben Wallerstein, who we all know, wrote about how, you know, these phone free schools, like the rebound effect after school was just dramatic on these kids. But I can imagine some people saying like, okay, but that's not the school's problem. Someone else has to deal with that. Right? Why? Why Are we putting this stuff on the schools? How do you all think about that aspect of it of like the responsible way to use technology that frankly, we're all dealing with these challenges in our lives with phones and so it's, you know, having the school be the place of that education. How do you think about that? Maybe Shannon, you, you jump in first because you've been in schools for so long.

Yeah. You know, I mean, I, I think of it as number one. It's not unusual for schools to consume these societal problems. And it's happened. You know, Julia mentioned already. Right. Mental health issues, nutrition, sex education, drug awareness, you know, all of these things over time as they've morphed in, schools have had to figure out how to help support that because it comes into school. And I think that's what's really important is, you know, I know schools don't necessarily sign up for it and unfortunately for them, it is another aspect that gets added to their plate. Absolutely. But at the same time, you know, I think that's, that's what we've seen and it's always going to change. And phones right now and the distractions are the thing.

Yeah.

The thing that needs to get integrated and to get created. And that's where we have seen similar models, abstinence based right away as the easy choice. But then they've all morphed and adopted more of a skill development, awareness and education model for our schools. When you look at their missions, most of our school's missions isn't to deliver academic content. Their mission is to help shape the whole student. And so I think by design, part of that does mean taking in some of these societal problems and being able to be a portion of that in the education and in the support to help students learn that. And what's really great about schools is that if we can get every student operating the same way, it's becoming more of that social norm versus being able to expect and hope that each individual student on willpower alone, when they haven't even developed some of the skill sets of willpower and you know, to be able to manage it on their own or that every single family is going to know how to navigate this as well. But at the same time, we don't believe it's just on the school to manage it. We, you know, really see that the parents, the school, the students all coming together is what changes major public health issues and crisis. But from a school perspective, I think them, you know, having to absorb what's happening is really important because if they don't absorb it. Students continue to be distracted in class, and then they do suffer from an academic standpoint or a social connection, so they have to do something about it. But in terms of the mission of the school, shape and mold our students, you know, to be successful for life. That's where I think there's a huge opportunity when it comes to this newer issue coming in for schools to be able to help coach, manage and develop the student.

And I guess it won't be too long until it's all wearable glasses and things of that nature. So having a technology solution for that is going to be way more practical than a pouch. But I'm curious. Well, and you implicitly made another point there also, which I think just to make sure people don't miss, right. Which is these habits of how you impulse control and study and executive function, et cetera, are actually pretty critical for mastering the academic content as well. So if you don't have them, it's going to be a problem toward that mission as well. Maybe. As we start to wrap up here, one more question that's sort of occurring to me is this seems tremendous in terms of fighting the distractions that are plaguing a lot of classrooms and students and so forth right now. I think another challenge that technology has brought is sort of, you could argue, schools already had coherence problems in terms of multiple curriculums and things of that nature. It's gotten worse, I think, with the number of technology apps out there and so forth. So I guess I'm curious there as well as, like, can schools use this to help create coherence in some way? To say, like, you know, we're not allowing these sorts of other, you know, apps, or can they add other things to the list that they see sort of driving distraction or coherence challenges or whatever they might be grappling with as a school community, is that something that they can custom build, custom play with it?

It's really interesting the way that you're bringing this up. And I, I mean, I think the answer is yes. And what I feel has been really amazing in this evolution with the commons is that now the directors of technologies at our schools are actually getting brought into the conversation where prior for phone distractions and physical based solutions, they didn't really have a place in that or were brought at all in the evaluation. But when technology directors are coming in, it's really allowing us to create a stronger initiative around how are we intentionally using technology in our schools. So I do think that that is a Layer how much the commons plays the role in facilitating that, you know, who knows? And I think that it can morph and change over time, but at least pulling it together. When we think about how are we going to use AI in our school, how are we going to use these different technologies in our schools? What about the one to one devices or BYODs? What about the phones? You know, I think the first phone part was almost lost on that, but it fits into the entire ecosystem in that initiative. How do we think about our own school WI fi network? You know, all of this can come together and facilitate a stronger discussion and game plan and framework for the school. And that's what we're seeing blended with within our app. We can white list academic based applications or medical that are really critical through the day. What that's allowed us to do in onboarding is challenge the school or allow the principal to challenge their teachers on why are we using this technologies, how are we using this technologies? And I think sometimes those conversations are just not happening. So I think that also is a really amazing aspect that we didn't even consider in the phone that now we are seeing it help to shape and mold it. So yes, I do think it plays that role and it can help schools think about it differently in building their frameworks and designing the way that they want to intentionally use technology. How they best educate, continue to train their teachers, continue to really make sure that we're utilizing technology the right way. Intentional use of the right screen time to aid in the student success. You know, I think that's still an area of education that we need to get better at and equipped our teachers in learning and developing in that way. And it's difficult when they have a thousand tasks to do. Absolutely. But to that point, you know, I do think the conversation of being able to facilitate it and incorporate us into the overall ecosystem that the school is building is something that is really awesome that our technology solution can do. That just wasn't a part of the conversation prior.

I think one thing to add on to exactly what you're saying is that it's been a facilitator to think about like the technological pedagogy of the school and overall philosophy of how they want to construct that similar and I like your word, cohesive feel through different grade levels and also a starting point on what is appropriate for different technology based use across grades, across, you know, across ages. And so it's been cool to be part of that conversation with the school.

That's a really cool place I think to Leave it. I'm just reflecting on one superintendent I was talking to, and he was bemoaning one of the chat bots, I can't remember which one. And, and, and I was saying, like, well, why do you allow it? And. Or, you know, why'd you put it in? And he was like, I, you know, tell the companies. I was like, well, what do you want the technology to do? Like, let's start with what you want the technology to do for you first, and then let's figure out the right answer as opposed to, oh, there's this technology. I don't like it, sort of snap reaction. So the fact that you are facilitating that conversation, creating a place where they feel like they can be in the driver's seat seems to me also tremendously important in all this. And so just huge thanks for the tagline again, helping students make the right choice by making it the easy choice. Abstinence alone isn't an answer I'm taking from this. And of course, the Commons app, airplane mode for schools. Julia Shannon, huge thanks for joining me and for doing this work.

Thank you so much, Michael. We appreciate it and just really always enjoy being able to share more about the Commons. So thank you for that as well.

Terrific. All right, well, we'll stay tuned. We'll be watching it eagerly. And for all of you tuning in, we'll be back. Next time on the Future of Education, Sa.