When I watch my 2 teenagers at home do homework it really amazes me.  They have ITunes going, a guitar in the lap that is getting strummed, the excel spreadsheet open and getting periodic attention, Google open for research, IMing with a couple of buddies and some food noshing along with it all.  It really makes me crazy  to watch them but they prefer to operate that way and the overall results are positive when the report cards comes home so who am I to say what is right?

I do watch kids in school however that are totally distracted by all this stuff.  Even though we have the technology and distractions that come along with it, there are still those that learn in different ways and it is not a one size fits all.  What we as adults could do is help the distracted ones find a better fit by encouraging them to lose some of the excess. 

I do still love the K.I.S.S. theory .....it is clean and elegant....and I guess OLD!

Jean

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>>> Stephen Barner <[log in to unmask]> 1/29/2008 11:12 AM >>>
I hope our economy can hold out until this new generation of "digital
natives" are productive members of the workforce. According to all the
highly-compensated gurus who present at the educational conferences,
these young people have rewired their brains through extended exposure
to multi-tasking and are actually more efficient than we old fogies who
have brains that can only do one or two things at the same time. Our
soon-to-be extinct species has been shown to actually take 20 minutes to
fully recover our efficiency after an interruption, but this new species
of human, homo iPodian, will actually perform better when interrupted,
according to these learned educational pundits.
 
So, let's just hope our economy can coast until these young people can
save our boomer bacon and pay for our Social Security. Let's also hope
they can survive their educational experience with those out-of-touch
teachers they have, like me, who still make them turn off their MP3
players and stop playing Helicopter when I'm trying to teach a class in
my doomed, old-fashioned sort of way.
 
--Steve Barner

________________________________

From: School Information Technology Discussion
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Raymond Ballou
Sent: Tuesday, January 29, 2008 10:27 AM
To: [log in to unmask] 
Subject: throw another distraction log on the IT pyre


all this technology making things better, where are my clogs?
 
R.
 
http://www.news.com/2010-1022_3-6228144.html 
 
"According to Basex <http://www.basex.com/web/tbghome.nsf/pages/home> ,
a research firm focusing on the knowledge economy, interruptions from
e-mail, cell phones, instant messaging, text messaging, and blogs eat up
nearly 30 percent of each day; on an annualized basis, this represents a
loss of 28 billion hours for the entire U.S. workforce, or a $588
billion cost to the American economy. "
 
"A 2006 research study conducted among sales and marketing teams at
Intel indicated that 54 percent of those surveyed believed e-mail had a
negative impact on their stress levels. And a number of other studies
show that productivity-enhancing hardware and software has helped
heighten distraction and discontinuity in the workplace at the expense
of critical and creative thinking--as well as constructive
collaboration. "

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