Multitasking: Destroying focus?

Test your multitasking ability with the NY Times.
Pictured above are my personal results.

In a previous post, I made a jab at multitaskers--using one article to suggest that having to switch frequently between tasks means that we do all of our desired tasks worse than before.


A string of Windows 7 commercials like this one hits the nail on the head: being able to do more at the same time in fact limits what we can do at once. Fascinating, no?


The question for me as a teacher is: 


How is this Affecting Our students?
It's hard to say at the middle school level where I teach, because these students have never been known for great attention spans. At the college level, many students bring in their laptops and unlimited distraction capabilities with them into the classroom. My kids don't bring their laptops anywhere (few probably own one), but I'm worried that with every new smartphone that hits the market, our culture is pushing this myth that the more things you can do at once, the better person you will become. When article after article after article report that multitasking does not increase effectiveness, I say that this is not doing a great deal to help our young people take full advantage of their powerful minds.

Test your multitasking ability with the NY Times.
Pictured above are my personal results.

Prove It To Your Students
Try this lesson plan to show your students about the cost of multitasking.


Test Your Own Multitasking Savvy
If you think that this claim is not true, try taking this test posted by the NY Times.
My scores are pictured on the right and above right. 

To Tweet or Not to Tweet: Hamlet's Blackberry

Did you know Hamlet had a Blackberry?


The Bard's greatest non-actor tackled an issue that confronts our society today: connectedness or nonconnectedness. Whereas he wrestled with whether to follow up on his ghost-father's plea for vengeance (connectedness) or go ahead and wash his hands of all that rotten mess in Denmark (nonconnectedness), author William Powers addresses our society's ability to use our new powers of constant digital connection to create real connections between people--or does this constant connection drive us further away?


You can read/listen to Powers' interview on NPR, where he talks about taking each weekend off from digital connectedness. A sort of "Internet Sabbath," the article says.

In his 2007 essay,  "Hamlet's Blackberry: Why Paper is Eternal," Powers explains that when Hamlet is overloaded with new and shocking information, he does the same thing we do in that situation: pulls out his smart phone and processes. For all we know, he may have been adding the ghost as a contact.



In fact, Powers describes a little tablet popularly carried around by people of the 16th century, and later by the likes of even Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin. Hamlet pulls out his tablet, which he calls a "table," and begins making notes. He can erase the notes with a sponge at any time to make room for new notes, which he says he will do upon hearing the ghost's chilling news.


Hamlet's tablet, like the modern Blackberry, came before the iPhone.

Ready for that Video Project? Easy Instructions for Windows Movie Maker

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A fun screenshot from an article
I wrote that you should check out.

Some years ago I wrote an article on the super basics of Windows Movie Maker (pictured on left) for use in the English classroom. The article is filled with easy instructions and fun screen shots. 


I've always loved Windows Movie Maker:
1. It's easy to use and easy to teach.
2. It's free.
3. At most schools, it's already available.

Thanks to Donors Choose I will be doing a project this year wherein my students will write, produce, and share original movie trailers based on given texts. The students will use Flip Video cameras (pictured on right) to film their projects and Windows Movie Maker (pictured above) to turn their work into award winning short videos. 


By doing this, students are engaged in an awesome act of creativity while at the same time invisibly practicing differing levels of reading comprehension and synthesis that they may never have accessed before. Exciting, right?


To see the "Hamlet" movie trailer that inspires projects like this, take a peek:







To see the "Apt. J Sing-A-Long" featured in the screenshot above, take a look at the video below: