The Darnedest Thing About Multitasking

Kids say the darnedest things. They say they can multitask. For a decade, as they grew up in the digital age, we adults thought "kids these days!" and believed them. I believed them, too. In fact, I envied them.

But then I read Brain Rules, by John J. Medina, a molecular biologist, who points to research that shows our brains and our students' brains don't work on two things as at a one. Like the computers we created in our own image, we are binary thinkers. We sequence. We this then that.

So multitasking is a myth. Stephen Henshaw, Chair/Professor of Psychology at University of California, Berkley, correctly names the activity of processing more than one media at a time as quicktasking. His comments are part of a new video feature at Common Sense Media. While quicktasking may be useful at times, constantly moving from one thing-task-idea to the next leaves our students without the skills of concentration and focus.

Two tips offered by Common Sense Media include:

• Limit distractions, turn off the electronics
• Encourage more reading

What makes this multitasking myth more insidious is the fact that it seems as if it's not a problem. Kids (and adults) think they are doing just fine. The National Academy of Sciences finds that heavy media multitasking students lack focus, understanding, and retention while trying to attend to two or more activities at one time. Time seemingly gained by doing or learning two things at once is actually lost if they are not able to be recalled later.

A study at Stanford University, showed that multitaskers were the worst at multitasking. By frequently multitasking, students are not only suffering when it comes to focusing on one thing, but are less able to focus on anything whether there's one, two, or more things. They scan but do not internalize information presented, perhaps because they treat all information with equal attention and do not focus, prioritize, or otherwise sort it out.

As much as I love to revel in our media world and the creativity it invites, I'd shudder to think that my students live a life without getting lost in a book for an hour or two or sit and write a journal or a poem without interruption. Beyond these romanticist ideals, as a teacher, I am concerned that our students are not able to "turn it on" when focus could mean the most. It is not an enviable situation. Focus, concentration, and retention are benefits too important to be winked at.

The darnedest thing is our students don't know what they are missing.




Image credit: Reformatted from"Multi-tasking." By Atonal. 27 Nov. 2007. Flickr/cc.

Idealistic, Content, Disheartened? (Or Burnt Out?)

"I don't know whether I believe in teacher burn out," my college supervisor Hilda A. Kring, Ph.D. said to me more than twenty years ago. She called herself a "realistic idealist" when it came to most matters, including the topic at hand. One of her proteges, I would say the same of myself, and as for her comment, ditto.

A recent comment by a reader prompted my consideration about this idea of "burnout." He suggested that I get out of teacher if I'm burnt out. Agreed, but I'm still not sure about the idea of burnout. (And if you're wondering, I don't think I am nor in denial.)

While I was thinking about this, I see a recent study by the Public Agenda has released a report on a related topic: Teaching for a Living: How Teachers See the Profession Today. The study sheds light on what makes teachers feel valued and less likely to quit. It mentions things like:

• offering career paths in education,


• ensuring technology is available to aid instruction,


• and increasing teacher salaries to levels of other professional jobs such as lawyers and doctors.

More interesting to me, the study separates the 890 teachers surveyed into three groups: contended, disheartened, and idealists. When I heard the three monikers, I instantly thought this made sense. Don't we fall into one of the three categories?

Well, in the study 40% fell into the disheartened category, 37% contented, and 23% idealist.

I've already tipped my hand. You know I fall in to the minority--which brings me back to my wondering if there is burnout. Maybe there is such a thing--and dishearteneds are the best ones to ask about it, 77% of those studied who have been teaching for more than 10 years. But this realistic idealist can't see it.

Although I'm "way older" than most idealists teachers recorded in the study (77% of idealists identified by the study are Gen. Y'ers with fewer than 10 years in the classroom), I'll find a path for my career (36% of idealist teachers said this would be in education but outside of the classroom for them), a way to get the tech, and take whatever raise my union can muster.

The Essences of Teaching: No. 3 -- Share, Spread, Show

Third in a Series of Three

(Review Part 1, Part 2)

And thirdly, great teachers, share what their doing—the pitfalls and panaceas—with others. The best teachers serve as resource not only for the students in their classrooms to other teachers down the hall, and beyond. They build bridges of collaboration and reflection, of experience and experimentation, and strategies and support. Teachers who share ideas, concerns, plans and materials redouble their own ability to create meaningful lessons for their classes.

Great teachers spread the word of their students' work (and their own expertise) by showcasing it with their administrators, parents, and community as their audience. It's important personally and professionally to let the world know what we accomplish with our students—how we strive and thrive in the classroom. Having stakeholders see us at our best can take the edge off when we risk a plan that doesn't turn out was well as we had hoped. Somewhere along the line, teachers as a profession became shy about telling others about the excellent work they do. Today we can't afford to be reclusive.

In this age, it's key to success of our profession to invite others into our classrooms and to show them what school is like nowadays. (My, how different from a decade ago!) Explain how we meet the challenges in creative, effective ways, and how we foster meaning and achievement for our students. Some teachers would argue that this is showing off. Well, yes it is, but as the old saying goes, "quality doesn't sell itself." Teachers must share their stories as well as their scholarship with other stakeholders besides their students.

Showing others our good work despite myriad challenges of low funding, lacking prestige, rising numbers of learning disabilities, and infrequent moral support from media, is good for everybody's sake. Students gain security and motivation knowing they're in the care of pros. Parents can rest assured their students will be equipped for tomorrow. And teachers can enjoy receiving some credit for their labors. Everyone benefits when teachers show the many, many ways we are effectively meeting students differentiated needs.

Now as the back-to-school season starts, is time to reflect, and shape ways to tell our stories, lay claim to our scholarship for the love of learning, and share the good news about teaching and learning in today's schools with everyone who will listen and then some.

The Outsourcing of Knowledge

Our ability to learn what we need for tomorrow is more important than what
we know today. A real challenge for any learning theory is to actuate known
knowledge at the point of application. When knowledge, however, is needed, but
not known, the ability to plug into sources to meet the requirements becomes a
vital skill. As knowledge continues to grow and evolve, access to what is needed
is more important than what the learner currently possesses.
-- George Siemens, 2004

A couple of years ago my students scoffed when I told them I didn't want a cell phone. Their chins dropped when I pointed out that "there are times when I don't want to be able to be reached."

I guess I am literally "out of touch." Well, not quite. It's been just over a year that I have a cell phone. I use it basically for long-distance calls (that are included in my plan) and for emergency calls (in stores: do we need milk?) I only agreed to get one to have in case of emergency on the highways and for travel. Still, I am not a phone-talker. Never was, probably never will be, brought up in the age of party lines and only using the phone for a dire purpose.

After reading George Siemens article on connectivism, I'm wondering if I'm cutting my phone to spite by future. Maybe my students are just practicing the skill of a lifelong learner. They are preparing themselves for the age when it's not what you know but who you know who knows it. Knowledge is outsourced to their friends in a lifetime of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire--Is that your final answer?

Networking surpasses Boolean searches. In fact, my students, despite all their tech savvy, seem to have no interest in learning how to do advanced Google searches, let alone learn Boolean techniques. Perhaps they are just waiting for the technology to catch up with their incompetence with technology. Futurist Ian Pearson predicts that by 2040 nanotechnology will be providing brain-machine connections. As we will think, we will know--heck, we won't have to think, just know. (As a reader of Orwell, I don't like the sound of that.) At any rate, our students for their ignorance, not despite it, turn out to be more savvy than un- after all.

Surely search engine engineers are going to figure out how to sidestep a researchers misteps. They already know whether we've misspelled a word, rite? But I digress.

In the interim, as a teacher I am muddling about the best ways to teach students ways to use technology that they think they already know but don't. They know some tricks, like how to turn a monitor's display upside down, how to switch between on-task and off-task websites as I circulate through the lab, and shortkeys. (Oh the sighs! as they watch me go step-by-step.) Yet they not nonplussed to find they haven't a clue as to how to save to a flashdrive, surf for websites from university sources, or cite a source. Rather, they can wait till there's an application that can do it for them. The wait may not be long. If they can't wait, they'll just text a friend.

Textual Literacy and Catching the Tsunami

Okay, so President Bush actually spoke truth when
in one of his malapropisms he mentioned the Internets plural. I recently learned that when it comes to the Internet, there are at least two. Mike Welsch, a cultural anthropologist professor at Kansas State University, gives a video introduction to Web 2.0 that really touches on the technological tsunami that already is above our heads.

Yes, my last post was in a "fischbowl" and now I'm treading water in a tsunami! That about sums up the situation of educators, students, our world ad nauseum with the Web.

And I'm going under.....when you consider the fact that the links I have on this blog, let alone the blog itself, cannot be read by any of my colleagues or students at the school where I teach because it has a web filter that blocks all sites that host discussions.

I'm reminded of an ancient parable about two frogs: puddle frog and ocean frog. When the ocean frog visits the puddle frog, he is shown all around the puddle. The puddle frog concludes his pridefilled tour of his abode with a polite question: "What's it like where you live." To this the ocean frog pauses, reflects, and replies, "I couldn't tell you."

It seems that the tsunami is washing us away and yet we are afraid to get our feet wet. School systems are used to linear, hierarchial structures. Teaching the institution to change while teaching in it is where we find ourselves today. If we can, indeed teach the instituion, we might become what's next. Otherwise we are Smith Corona. Remember the topnotch typewriter company? Well, you don't see many Smith Corona keypads today, do you? They didn't catch the wave.