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Dave Crenshaw discussed his latest book, The Myth of Multitasking. Crenshaw makes a strong distinction behind “background tasking”—reading a magazine while waiting in line, for instance, or listening to music while coding—and “switch-tasking.” Most of the time, when we talk about “multi-tasking,” we’re actually talking about the very costly practice of “switch-tasking.” Every time you switch your attention from one place to another—even from one browser window to another—you take a significant hit to your focus

Switch-tasking, he definitively proves, causes you to execute each task more slowly than you would otherwise, with more errors

pecifically, what can parents, teachers, and employers do to help their kids, students, and employees focus their attention more effectively? As a kid, student, and employee myself, I have to say that I believe the solution is emphatically not to limit access—at least not for older teens. Rather, I think the key lies in laying out the facts and discussing strategies. Information overload and the allure of infinite access, after all, are challenges that affect everyone with an internet connection—not just young people. And, though writing a stellar book report might not be a cause compelling enough to warrant total focus, every young person will at some point find a pursuit worth paying attention to. Maybe it’s writing short stories; maybe writing music. Maybe it’s making art. But when that pursuit comes along, they’re going to want to know how to firewall their attention, focus their efforts, and—for once—stop switching.

Students there and in four other New Jersey school districts will take a leap in classroom technology this year, using Apple's iTunes store to post and share educational material.

Lectures, student projects, orientation videos and other media can be posted on iTunes, available free to students and parents in the five districts, or anyone else.

K-12 on iTunes U

As a whole, the education industry is usually relatively slow to integrate technology into the classroom. In lots of schools nationwide, unbridled access to computers and the Internet is still the exception rather than the rule.

The moment students get outside of the classroom, on the other hand, social networking is almost a daily ritual.

Dedicated commercial Web 2.0 products and social networking applications are still too new and too rich for typical school leaders to afford. So third-party providers are more likely to offer technology services to students and their schools to expand their horizons in ways never before possible. For example, some school districts are going beyond e-mail technology and using collaboration software and online services to share information, host Web conferences and assign tasks and projects.

Become powerful advocates for change. Regardless of who inhabits the White House next year, educational technology must play a more prominent role in our national education policy, Davis said--and educators should do everything they can to ensure that it does.

Share your knowledge and your passion. Help others take steps to ensure their growth as teachers, Davis said--so they can help students grow as learners. 3. Showcase your work, and students' work, in innovative ways. Invite parents and community leaders into your schools, Davis said--or take students' projects to them with the help of podcasts and other technologies.

Dream big. Have high expectations for your students, Davis said, because the possibilities that educational technology offers are "endless." 5. Use all of the resources available to you as you try to effect change. These include ISTE's many online resources, such as the group's National Educational Technology Standards and its research-based reports.

Brown's class was discussing some of the whaling calculations in Moby Dick. When one student asked a question involving a complex computation, three students quickly pulled out their cell phones and did the math. Brown was surprised to learn that most cell phones have a built-in calculator. She was even more surprised at how literate her students were with the many functions included in their phones. She took a quick poll and found that all her students either had a cell phone or easy access to one. In fact, students became genuinely engaged in a class discussion about phone features. This got Brown thinking about how she might incorporate this technology into learning activities.

Brown noticed that many students used text messaging to communicate, and considered how she might use cell phones in summarizing and analyzing text to help her students better understand Richard III. Effective summarizing is one of the most powerful skills students can cultivate. It provides students with tools for identifying the most important aspects of what they are learning, especially when teachers use a frame of reference (Marzano, Pickering, & Pollock, 2001). Summarizing helps students identify critical information. Research shows gains in reading comprehension when students learn how to incorporate isummary framesi (series of questions designed to highlight critical passages) as a tool for summarizing (Meyer & Freedle, 1984). When students use this strategy, they are better able to understand what they are reading, identify key information, and provide a summary that helps them retain the information (Armbruster, Anderson, & Ostertag, 1987).

Text messaging is a real-world example of summarizing—to communicate information in a few words the user must identify key ideas. Brown saw that she could use a technique students had already mastered, within the context of literature study.

This morning, Bud The Teacher, posted a request for designs for a 21st Century version of the “I Read Banned Books” buttons that we are all so familiar with. In response to this request, I played around with an idea:

Teachers are no longer “transmitters of data,” but active participants in the student’s learning process.

with our advanced, technological world, we must not only acknowledge the new technologies emerging but we must gain knowledge on how to use them.

f school became an interactive place where both students and teachers put their two cents in: teachers teaching students, students teaching students, teachers sharing ideas and students executing these ideas-school would be great. If we all focus on change and ways to make interactive learning better we could reach so many people! Not only can we interact with each other but we can raise awareness and pose solutions on the many issues regarding education.