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<font size="2">Earl<font size="2">ier this week</font> I read a meat<font size="2">y</font> blog posting called "How Does Multitasking Change the Way Kids Learn?"
</font><font size="2">by author and journalist, Annie Murphy Paul</font>. Note that though the title uses the word "kids," several of the referenced studies involved high schoolers or college students.<br>
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<a href="http://blogs.kqed.org/mindshift/2013/05/how-does-multitasking-change-the-way-kids-learn/" target="_blank">
blogs.kqed.org/mindshift/2013/05/how-does-multitasking-change-the-way-kids-learn</a>
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Here is some information that stood out to me. All bullets are quotes from the article.<br>
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<li><font size="2">Evidence from psychology, cognitive science, and neuroscience suggests that when students multitask while doing schoolwork, their learning is far spottier and shallower than if the work had their full attention.</font></li></ul>
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<li><font size="2">Multitasking students understand and remember less, and they have greater difficulty transferring their learning to new contexts.
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</font></li><li><font size="2">Texting, emailing, and posting on Facebook and other social media sites are by far the most common digital activities students undertake while learning, according to Rosen. That’s a problem, because these operations are actually quite mentally
complex, and they draw on the same mental resources—using language, parsing meaning—demanded by schoolwork.<br>
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</font></li><li><font size="2">Per David Meyer, a psychology professor: Under most conditions, the brain simply cannot do two complex tasks at the same time. It can happen only when the two tasks are both very simple and when they don’t compete with each other for the
same mental resources. An example would be folding laundry and listening to the weather report on the radio. That’s fine. But listening to a lecture while texting, or doing homework and being on Facebook—each of these tasks is very demanding, and each of them
uses the same area of the brain, the prefrontal cortex.<br>
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</font></li><li><font size="2">Researchers have documented a cascade of negative outcomes that occurs when students multitask while doing schoolwork.
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<li><font size="2">First, the assignment takes longer to complete, because of the time spent on distracting activities and because, upon returning to the assignment, the student has to re-familiarize himself with the material.</font></li><li><font size="2">Second, the mental fatigue caused by repeatedly dropping and picking up a mental thread leads to more mistakes...</font></li><li><font size="2">Third, students’ subsequent memory of what they’re working on will be impaired if their attention is divided...</font></li><li><font size="2">Fourth, some research has suggested that when we’re distracted, our brains actually process and store information in different, less useful ways...</font></li></ul>
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<li><font size="2">This ability to resist the lure of technology can be consciously cultivated, Rosen maintains. He advises students to take "tech breaks" to satisfy their cravings for electronic communication: After they’ve labored on their schoolwork uninterrupted
for 15 minutes, they can allow themselves two minutes to text, check websites, and post to their hearts’ content. Then the devices get turned off for another 15 minutes of academics. Over time, Rosen says, students are able extend their working time to 20,
30, even 45 minutes, as long as they know that an opportunity to get online awaits.</font></li></ul>
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<li><font size="2">It would be hard to enforce a total ban on media multitasking, but parents can draw a line when it comes to homework and studying—telling their kids, ‘This is a time when you will concentrate on just one thing.’</font></li></ul>
<font size="2">It would be interest<font size="2">ing to see how students in your library<font size="2">
</font>respond to this article. Here<font size="2"> are some of the responses from teenagers that wer<font size="2">e
<font size="2">left as comments on the blog posting: </font></font></font></font></font><a href="http://anniemurphypaul.com/2013/05/reaction-to-my-multitasking-article-the-teenagers-speak/" target="_blank">http://anniemurphypaul.com/2013/05/reaction-to-my-multitasking-article-the-teenagers-speak/</a>.<font size="2">
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FYI,<br>
Jen</font><br>
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<div style="font-family:Tahoma; font-size:13px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman">Jennifer Maurer</span><br style="font-family:Times New Roman">
<span style="font-family:Times New Roman">School Library Consultant</span><br style="font-family:Times New Roman">
<span style="font-family:Times New Roman">Oregon State Library</span><br style="font-family:Times New Roman">
<span style="font-family:Times New Roman">250 Winter St NE</span><br style="font-family:Times New Roman">
<span style="font-family:Times New Roman">Salem, OR 97301</span><br style="font-family:Times New Roman">
<span style="font-family:Times New Roman">503.378.5011</span><br style="font-family:Times New Roman">
<span style="font-family:Times New Roman">jennifer.maurer@state.or.us<br>
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