Age of Distraction: Why It’s Crucial for Students to Learn to Focus Digital classroom tools like computers, tablets and smartphones offer exciting opportunities to deepen learning through creativity, collaboration and connection, but those very devices can also be distracting to students. Similarly, parents complain that when students are required to complete homework assignments online, it’s a challenge for students to remain on task. The ubiquity of digital technology in all realms of life isn’t going away, but if students don’t learn how to concentrate and shut out distractions, research shows they’ll have a much harder time succeeding in almost every area. “The real message is because attention is under siege more than it has ever been in human history, we have more distractions than ever before, we have to be more focused on cultivating the skills of attention,” said Daniel Goleman, a psychologist and author of Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence and other books about social and emotional learning on KQED’s Forum program.
Tackling the Digital Divide: Low-Income Students Weigh In The article For Low Income Kids, Access to Devices Could Be the Equalizer raised the possibility that mobile technology in classrooms could help narrow the digital divide between the nation’s low-income and more affluent students. The article, which included suggestions for educators about how to access devices and what do with them, struck a chord with readers. Many were outraged that some students are missing out on valuable learning resources because of their families’ socio-economic status, while others worried that bringing mobile devices into the classroom – any classroom – invites chaos. “The internet is the modern day encyclopedia,” wrote commenter Patrick Hopkins, who grew up in a single-parent low-income household, and now teaches in an upper-middle class school district. “Teachers must have an abundant amount of trust in their students that they are staying on task when using their own devices in the classroom.” For some readers, it comes back to the issue of trust.
Nyheter - Arkiv Notis - Nyheter - Arkiv Lunds universitet Universitetets Ljudmiljöcentrum har i ett forskningsprojekt, finansierat av Sparbanken Finns Framtidsstiftelse, undersökt hur läsning och läsförståelse påverkas av ljudmiljöer. Under vetenskapligt kontrollerade former har ett antal personer studerats när de läst texter till bakgrund av ett antal olika ljud. Bland alternativen fanns såväl självvald musik som musik de inte gillade, likaväl som cafesorl respektive tystnad. Att tystnad ger de bästa resultaten i fråga om läsförståelse står utom allt tvivel. Genom att iaktta förändringar i pupillstorleken kunde man se hur hjärnans arbetsbörda minskade vid tystnad. Projektet är ett tvärvetenskapligt samarbete mellan Ljudmiljöcentrum och institutionerna för musikvetenskap, psykologi och kognitionsvetenskap vid Lunds universitet.
”Ständig uppkoppling farligt för barns hjärnor” Det säger professorn i psykologi vid University of California San Diego, Larry Rosen, till SVT:s Korrespondenterna. De senaste 30 åren har han forskat kring vårt digitala liv. Tillsammans med kolleger i Kalifornien har han gjort en mängd studier på barn och unga. – Vi ser att användningen av mobiler, datorer och läsplattor ändrar på hjärnans funktioner. Om barnen använder tekniken i en lärande miljö så är det bra för hjärnan, det utvecklar den, säger han. Men det forskarna också ser är en generation med både barn och vuxna som lever i en miljö där de är ständigt uppkopplade, och som använder många skärmar på en gång, alltså "multitasking". Hjärnan överaktiveras – Multitasking gör att våra hjärnor aldrig borrar sig ner i ett ämne. Forskningen visar en rad konsekvenser av barns och ungas multitasking, som uppmärksamhetsproblem, dåligt beslutsfattande på grund av ytliga kunskaper, dålig sömn och som följd av det överdosering av koffein som finns i bl a energidrycker. ”Vi dreglar över mobilen”
Millennials will benefit and suffer due to their hyperconnected lives Overview of responses In a survey about the future of the internet, technology experts and stakeholders were fairly evenly split as to whether the younger generation’s always-on connection to people and information will turn out to be a net positive or a net negative by 2020. They said many of the young people growing up hyperconnected to each other and the mobile Web and counting on the internet as their external brain will be nimble, quick-acting multitaskers who will do well in key respects. At the same time, these experts predicted that the impact of networked living on today’s young will drive them to thirst for instant gratification, settle for quick choices, and lack patience. A number of the survey respondents argued that it is vital to reform education and emphasize digital literacy. These findings come from an opt-in, online survey of a diverse but non-random sample of 1,021 technology stakeholders and critics. Here is a sampling of their predictions and arguments:
Classroom Laptop Users Distract Others As Well As Themselves Thursday, April 25, 2013 It won’t surprise anyone to learn that having a laptop computer open in a lecture class is an invitation to distraction for the user. But what about the students sitting nearby? A new study by a group of researchers at McMaster and York universities, both in Canada, finds evidence that laptop use in college classrooms distracts not just laptop owners, but their classmates as well. The researchers begin their article, published last month in the journal Computers & Education, by reviewing what we know about learning while our attention is divided: “Research suggests that we have limited resources available to attend to, process, encode, and store information for later retrieval. When we eventually retrieve information that was processed without interruptions, as a primary task, we are likely to experience minimal errors. These findings “are especially significant when considered in the context of student learning,” the authors note: The authors conclude:
Divided attention and memory: evidence of substantial interference ... How Does Multitasking Change the Way Kids Learn? Using tech tools that students are familiar with and already enjoy using is attractive to educators, but getting students focused on the project at hand might be more difficult because of it. Living rooms, dens, kitchens, even bedrooms: Investigators followed students into the spaces where homework gets done. Pens poised over their “study observation forms,” the observers watched intently as the students—in middle school, high school, and college, 263 in all—opened their books and turned on their computers. For a quarter of an hour, the investigators from the lab of Larry Rosen, a psychology professor at California State University-Dominguez Hills, marked down once a minute what the students were doing as they studied. A checklist on the form included: reading a book, writing on paper, typing on the computer—and also using email, looking at Facebook, engaging in instant messaging, texting, talking on the phone, watching television, listening to music, surfing the web. Related
With Tech Tools, How Should Teachers Tackle Multitasking In Class? Important research compiled on the effects of students multitasking while learning shows that they are losing depth of learning, getting mentally fatigued, and are weakening their ability to transfer what they have learned to other subjects and situations. Educators as well as students have noticed how schoolwork suffers when attention is split between homework and a buzzing smartphone. Many students, like Alex Sifuentes, who admit to multitasking while studying, know the consequences well. “When I was grounded for a couple of months and didn’t have my phone, I got done extra early with homework,” Sifuentes wrote in response to Annie Murphy Paul’s article, “How Does Multitasking Change the Way Kids Learn?” Parents also see a big difference in their kids’ studying habits. Jenifer Gossman reported that her 17-year-old daughter asked her brother to hide her phone so she could study for several important exams. “Look, it’s not going away. “Look, it’s not going away. Related