Digital Minds

I thoroughly enjoyed last week's discussion. It helped me realize a multitude of things; 1) how dependent we all are on technology 2) how I inaccurately label what I am doing as "multi-tasking" 3) how, in turn, I require my students to "multi-task" and 4) how my students are becoming increasingly more dependent on technology. As I have mentioned before, I work at a school that not only incorporates technology, but embraces it, relies on it, and expects the students to rely on it as well. I believe that they have accepted the notion that our students are growing up in a technologically fast world, and we can either shield them from that, or teach them how to use it responsibly. In the Life Skills course the students learn about cyber identities and cyber footprints. I think it is great that they learn at a very young age that everything you do on a computer, is essentially public. The school even hosts its own social network site where students can create profiles and play around with the idea of cyber identities. Not surprisingly, they love it. Again, I think it is great that responsibility and technology have become part of the school curriculum--it makes sense to me.

However, it is interesting to realize how many of us think we are capable of multi-tasking, when really, some piece of our final outcome is suffering due to the fact that our energy is spread out across different mediums instead of focused. We can do 5 things at once, each resulting in 1/5 of its potential quality, or we can give out entire attention to one thing, resulting in a higher quality outcome. It seems so simple, yet I found myself acknowledging all the multi-tasking I ask of my students, and yet, I am still surprised when the quality doesn't meet my expectations. That's not fair. I now find myself trying to identify what ways in which I ask my students to multi-task and correct this issue by breaking them into smaller tasks. The results? To be determined....