Part of an interesting article I found on LinkedIn A salient side note here is that although the concept of the digital native explicitly and/or implicitly assumes that the current generation of children is digitally literate, many curricula (e.g., Iowa Department of Education) see information and technology literacy as 21st-century skills that are core curriculum goals at the end of the educational process and that need to be acquired. An unfortunate outcome of the false premise of the digital native is another egregious belief: Students have the ability to multitask. That is, they can text, snap-chat, post to Instagram, and complete complex cognitive tasks such as reading and comprehending their reading simultaneously. Rather than multi-tasking, the simultaneous and/or concurrent performance of two or more tasks requiring cognition or information processing students engaged with multiple and competing tasks vying for their attention are actually switching from one to another without fully concentrating on any one cognitive complex performance task. Simply, its impossible for two things to occupy the same space at one time. Task shifting diverts a students attention away from one project to another. This results in shallow thinking and redundancy as students must often backtrack before moving forward with the reading or writing that necessitates uninterrupted attention. It has been broadly shown that rapid switching behavior, when compared to carrying out tasks serially, leads to poorer learning results in students and poorer performance of tasks. I call this phenomenon the Where Was I effect. Weve all experienced it, that moment when a call or child or other interruption distracts u from a task in which we are immersed. Returning to the task, we wander, Where was I, and we find ourselves retracing our steps or rereading a passage just to find our place so that we can move on toward completing our goal. Juggling tasks leads to mistakes and prolongs completion of important projects. Its a myth, an urban legend, a vampire lie with which students delude themselves to think that homework can be completed and skills learned just as well when we text while researching a topic for English. Kirschner and van Merrienboer extend their analysis to include doctors and pilots and note that multitasking and diversions lead to increased mistakes in both professions. They also review the research suggesting that texting and driving is just as dangerous as driving under the influence. Simply, the digital natives, iGeneration, homo zappiens, Generation I, and multitaskers among us dont exist in the idealistic incarnation envisioned among supporters of educational technology that chant, Let my people text. These are the 21st Century equivalent of Big Foot and unicorns. As teachers, our job necessitates we teach students to recognize the tech fairy tales and learn accordingly.
Posted on: Sat, 26 Jul 2014 11:09:23 +0000
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