Blowing a hole in the idea that young people are building skills that the older ones could never dream of: “Multi-taskers often think they are like gym rats, bulking up their ability to juggle tasks, when in fact they are like alcoholics, degrading their abilities through over-consumption.”
No, this doesn’t mean you hate technology: “Even a passing familiarity with the literature on programming, a famously arduous cognitive task, will acquaint you with stories of people falling into code-flow so deep they lose track of time, forgetting to eat or sleep. Computers are not inherent sources of distraction—they can in fact be powerful engines of focus—but latter-day versions have been designed to be, because attention is the substance which makes the whole consumer internet go.”
And yes, that guy two rows up just made you bomb your test by using his laptop for the last three weeks of class:“Allowing laptop use in class is like allowing boombox use in class—it lets each person choose whether to degrade the experience of those around them.”
“Anyone distracted in class doesn’t just lose out on the content of the discussion, they create a sense of permission that opting out is OK, and, worse, a haze of second-hand distraction for their peers. In an environment like this, students need support for the better angels of their nature (or at least the more intellectual angels), and they need defenses against the powerful short-term incentives to put off complex, frustrating tasks. That support and those defenses don’t just happen, and they are not limited to the individual’s choices. They are provided by social structure, and that structure is disproportionately provided by the professor, especially during the first weeks of class.”
https://medium.com/@cshirky/why-i-just-asked-my-students-to-put-their-laptops-away-7f5f7c50f368
Erin
Alan Schmierer