The ____ Generation

February 9, 2008 — Daniel

For a moment lets not wonder whether digital native is an appropriate term for today’s youth (or even today’s under 36′s if we go by the cut-off originally proposed by Prensky). Instead, whatever they are, can we find an alternative suitable name for the new generation of youth? Take your pick, the following are all ones I’ve found in literature or popular press in recent days, weeks and months. Sometimes I see several of these in the one day!

The ____ Generation. Insert one of:

Google, iPod, Gamer, MySpace, Nintendo, Now, N, Net, Multi-tasking, Benefits, Facebook.

To help you choose I undertook a *highly* scientific survey of popularity of each. I googled each term, and have ranked them below. Try and order them before you see the results – how many did you get right?

(more…)

Posted in Digital Natives, Multi-tasking, Net Generation. Tags: , , , , , , , , . 4 Comments »

Multi-tasking impairs performance

April 5, 2007 — Daniel

Cover article in this week’s New Scientist is on multi-tasking. It cites research rounded up in a paper with the snappy title “Capacity limits of information processing in the brain” from volume 9 of the very respected journal Trends in Cognitive Sciences. Last year they had another piece about the effect of interruptions during work, which I commented on here.  This latest piece reinforces my belief that multi-tasking is not as great as its cracked up to be – and provides more hard evidence…

(more…)

Posted in Digital Natives, Multi-tasking. No Comments »

When Students Attempt to Multitask in the Lecture Hall…

January 27, 2007 — Daniel

Pointed to this article in Chronicle Careers, on the effect of modern distractions in the lecture hall, by yet another post on the Second Life Education Mailing list. For a short article, it covers a lot of ground – and some of the points are quite thought provoking. More below.

(more…)

Posted in Attention, Digital Natives, Education, Multi-tasking, Teaching, Technology. 2 Comments »

Twitch Speed, part last

October 22, 2006 — Daniel

With heavy heart, I return to my analysis of the Twitch Speed paper, and begun here and continued here. Originally I thought I’d enjoy this bit, but as I’ve got more involved in the literature, I’ve realised – with help of some of you out there – that I’d much rather just move on. I’ll make this my last post on the seminal paper, and to boot I’ll throw in some comments on “Don’t Bother Me Mom – I’m Learning”. Then I’ll return that book to my colleague. And then I’ll finally move on.

The sections I’ll look at this time are Parallel vs. Linear Processing and Random Access vs. Linear Thinking. At first it seems obvious – parallel processing has to be better than linear: being able to deal with multiple strands at once. And old fashioned liner thinking! Who could possibly want that!

I think Prensky made a clever choice of terms here, so I’m going to change the labels for a start. So question: What do you call linear processing combined with linear thinking?

(more…)

Posted in Games Based Learning, Multi-tasking, Twitch Speed. 1 Comment »

Multi-tasking makes you stupid

September 19, 2006 — Daniel

Dug out an old copy of the New Scientist – 24th June 2006 (no. 2557, p46-49). Included a mention of some research from 2005 which showed that dealing with emails and phone calls while working has a greater IQ lowering effect than smoking marijuana. Can read more in this press release from the original report.

The 2006 article (see online article here) is about technology in development which seeks to help reduce interruptions, but also includes some practical advice such as:

If an interruption is likely to take longer than 2 minutes, add it to your to-do list and go back to what you were already doing.

It certainly seems that the current generation of office workers perform worse when they attempt to multi-task.

Posted in Multi-tasking, Technology. No Comments »
«
»