The war on attention span

Let me first go on the record as saying that I am really geeked up (both literally and figuratively) about all of the connectivity and collaboration possibilities of Web2.0. With that being said, there also are some potential downsides to constantly being connected 24/7 and I feel that it is something that we as educators should discuss with our students.

We have been hearing for years about how this new generation of students has the ability to multi-task. At first, this was seen as a good thing, with the thinking being that they could get more done because they can do many things at once. However, recent studies have suggested that this generation's multi-tasking is actually counterproductive. They tend to not finish tasks on time or at all because they are constantly doing so many activities (or web-apps).

On a related note, I came across this story about the new work ethic that is going to be needed for success in the Information Age. It talks about how hard work is no longer the most important aspect of a person's work ethic. With the rise of so many popular web applications such as You Tube, Twitter, email, Facebook and so on, it is becoming increasingly difficult to stay on task and get everything done that you need to, whether it is for work or the teacher.

I can't agree with this more. Ever since I finished student teaching, I have been trying to grow my PLN through a variety of means. I have joined social networks and Twitter, increased my list of blogs that I follow etc. In this time, I also have discovered that I have become less productive. I keep a list of digital projects that I am currently working on or want to work on for my digital portfolio, and as the days go by, the list just keeps getting longer and longer. (Now, this also has to do with the fact that I keep coming across such great projects via my PLN too.) This is similar in a lot of ways to my love of travel. As the saying goes (paraphrasing), "The more countries I visit, the more my list of countries that I want to visit grows."

The article quotes David Brooks of the New York Times:

"Control of attention is the ultimate individual power," he wrote. "People who can do that are not prisoners of the stimuli around them."

All of the ed tech evangelists talk about how we need to start having our students engage with all of the new technologies, and I agree with them. But at the same time, I also believe that we should give them coping mechanisms that provide a way for them to structure their time so that they can be as productive as possible without getting lost in all of the web-apps.

One of the solutions that I thought about for myself is creating a daily calendar that list the time allotments for each of the tasks that the individual needs to accomplish that day, including the digital tasks. I know that it's not groundbreaking by any means, but it could be helpful for students to see visually how their afternoon/evening is laid out for them so that they get everything accomplished that they need to. I think that this will help because it will limit the amount of time that they spend doing one task and it hopefully will keep them focused throughout. It is also important in this scheduling process to pencil in "fun time" as well so that it is not all work and no play (makes Jack a dull boy). But going back to the article again,

In one generation, we've gone from a total separation of "work" from "non-work" to one in which both work and play are always sitting right in front of us.

So I think it is also very important for the parents and the child to work together to come up with their own individualized definition of what "fun time" actually is. As I mentioned above, I am currently experiencing a war on my attention span and I am going to try out this possible solution and make a daily calendar of what I need to do for the day. We'll see how it goes.