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Laura Covington

Technology Is Changing How Students Learn, Teachers Say - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...udents-learn-teachers-say.html

visual literacy Debate Decline literacy skills education students

shared by Laura Covington on 12 Feb 14 - No Cached
  • There is a widespread belief among teachers that students’ constant use of digital technology is hampering their attention spans and ability to persevere in the face of challenging tasks, according to two surveys of teachers being released on Thursday.
  • The researchers note that their findings represent the subjective views of teachers and should not be seen as definitive proof that widespread use of computers, phones and video games affects students’ capability to focus. Even so, the researchers who performed the studies, as well as scholars who study technology’s impact on behavior and the brain, say the studies are significant because of the vantage points of teachers, who spend hours a day observing students. The timing of the studies, from two well-regarded research organizations, appears to be coincidental.
  • One was conducted by the Pew Internet Project, a division of the Pew Research Center that focuses on technology-related research. The other comes from Common Sense Media, a nonprofit organization in San Francisco that advises parents on media use by children. It was conducted by Vicky Rideout, a researcher who has previously shown that media use among children and teenagers ages 8 to 18 has grown so fast that they on average spend twice as much time with screens each year as they spend in school.
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  • She said she did not want to shrink from the challenge of engaging them, nor did other teachers interviewed, but she also worried that technology was causing a deeper shift in how students learned. She also wondered if teachers were adding to the problem by adjusting their lessons to accommodate shorter attention spans.
  • “I’m an entertainer. I have to do a song and dance to capture their attention,” said Hope Molina-Porter, 37, an English teacher at Troy High School in Fullerton, Calif., who has taught for 14 years. She teaches accelerated students, but has noted a marked decline in the depth and analysis of their written work.
  • “Are we contributing to this?” Ms. Molina-Porter said. “What’s going to happen when they don’t have constant entertainment?”
  • The surveys also found that many teachers said technology could be a useful educational tool. In the Pew survey, which was done in conjunction with the College Board and the National Writing Project, roughly 75 percent of 2,462 teachers surveyed said that the Internet and search engines had a “mostly positive” impact on student research skills. And they said such tools had made students more self-sufficient researchers. But nearly 90 percent said that digital technologies were creating “an easily distracted generation with short attention spans.” Similarly, of the 685 teachers surveyed in the Common Sense project, 71 percent said they thought technology was hurting attention span “somewhat” or “a lot.” About 60 percent said it hindered students’ ability to write and communicate face to face, and almost half said it hurt critical thinking and their ability to do homework.
  • In interviews, teachers described what might be called a “Wikipedia problem,” in which students have grown so accustomed to getting quick answers with a few keystrokes that they are more likely to give up when an easy answer eludes them. The Pew research found that 76 percent of teachers believed students had been conditioned by the Internet to find quick answers. “They need skills that are different than ‘Spit, spit, there’s the answer,’ ” said Lisa Baldwin, 48, a high school teacher in Great Barrington, Mass., who said students’ ability to focus and fight through academic challenges was suffering an “exponential decline.” She said she saw the decline most sharply in students whose parents allowed unfettered access to television, phones, iPads and video games.
  • The heavy technology use, Dr. Christakis said, “makes reality by comparison uninteresting.”
  • Laura Covington on 12 Feb 14
     
    A study designed by the Pew Internet Project conducted by Pew Research Center and another study performed by Common Sense Media shows that the widespread use of digital devices hamper a students ability to focus. They also show a remarkable decline in a student's capability to push through difficult assignments and tasks, and even teachers who teach advanced students show decline in "the depth and analysis of their written work". Though the studies findings provided by teachers may be seen as "subjective". even the researchers themselves, and scholars who study technology's impact "on behavior and on the brain", acknowledge the findings to be "significant" due to the fact that teachers spend a great deal more time with these students, observing their literacy and learning skills, more than anyone else.
Laura Covington

Cris Rowan: The Impact of Technology on the Developing Child - 0 views

www.huffingtonpost.com/...negative-impact_b_3343245.html

visual literacy technology Debate learning criticalthinking analysis children negative development impact decline research study effects

shared by Laura Covington on 14 Feb 14 - No Cached
  • Children of the past moved... a lot, and their sensory world was nature based and simple.
  • Today's families are different. Technology's impact on the 21st century family is fracturing its very foundation, and causing a disintegration of core values that long ago were the fabric that held families together. Juggling school, work, home, and community lives, parents now rely heavily on communication, information, and transportation technology to make their lives faster and more efficient. Entertainment technology (TV, Internet, video games, iPads, cell phones) has advanced so rapidly, that families have scarcely noticed the significant impact and changes to their family structure and lifestyles. A 2010 Kaiser Foundation study showed that elementary aged children use on average 7.5 hours per day of entertainment technology, 75 percent of these children have TV's in their bedrooms, and 50 percent of North American homes have the TV on all day. Gone is dining room table conversation, replaced by the "big screen" and take out.
  • Children now rely on technology for the majority of their play, grossly limiting challenges to their creativity and imaginations, as well as limiting necessary challenges to their bodies to achieve optimal sensory and motor development. Sedentary bodies bombarded with chaotic sensory stimulation are resulting in delays in attaining child developmental milestones, with subsequent negative impact on basic foundation skills for achieving literacy. Hard-wired for high speed, today's young are entering school struggling with self regulation and attention skills necessary for learning, eventually becoming significant behavior management problems for teachers in the classroom.
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  • So what is the impact of technology on the developing child? Children's developing sensory, motor, and attachment systems have biologically not evolved to accommodate this sedentary, yet frenzied and chaotic nature of today's technology. The impact of rapidly advancing technology on the developing child has seen an increase of physical, psychological and behavior disorders that the health and education systems are just beginning to detect, much less understand
  • Four critical factors necessary to achieve healthy child development are movement, touch, human connection, and exposure to nature. These types of sensory inputs ensure normal development of posture, bilateral coordination, optimal arousal states and self-regulation necessary for achieving foundation skills for eventual school entry. Young children require 2-3 hours per day of active rough and tumble play to achieve adequate sensory stimulation to their vestibular, proprioceptive and tactile systems. Tactile stimulation received through touching, hugging and play is critical for the development of praxis, or planned movement patterns. Touch also activates the parasympathetic system lowering cortisol, adrenalin and anxiety. Nature and "green space" has not only a calming influence on children, but also is attention restorative and promotes learning.
  • Laura Covington on 14 Feb 14
     
    A study done in 2010, by The Kaiser Foundation shows how drastically every facet of our lives, especially our children's lives, have changed and been negatively impacted, because of the constant, and continual up-rise of the use of technology. The increase of time spent watching television, for instance, has limited physical activity, leaving us sedentary a great deal of that time. The "chaotic sensory stimulation" that 21st century technology creates, conflicts with the sedentary state, and as a result, there are "delays in attaining child developmental milestones, with subsequent negative impact on basic foundation skills for achieving literacy. Hard-wired for high speed, today's young are entering school struggling with self regulation and attention skills necessary for learning, eventually becoming significant behavior management problems for teachers in the classroom."
Victor Salinas

LexisNexis® Academic & Library Solutions - 0 views

www.lexisnexis.com.oclc.fullsail.edu/...getDocCui

LexisNexis research The Independent Attention

shared by Victor Salinas on 13 Feb 14 - No Cached
    • Victor Salinas
      Victor Salinas on 13 Feb 14
       
      Carr's argument is scientific rather than moral. The internet, he argues, has been "tinkering" with our brains. It is eroding our ability to concentrate and contemplate intellectually, the mental requisites that allow us to read and digest books. Instead of readers, the digital revolution is transforming all of us into skimmers - highly skilled at mentally jumping from hypertext to hypertext link, but increasingly unable to digest long or complex textual information, particularly in book form. Quoting the Tufts University developmental psychologist and leading authority on the act of reading, Maryanne Wolf, Carr reminds us we are not only "what we read" but also "how we read".
    • Victor Salinas
      Victor Salinas on 13 Feb 14
       
      Thus, today's skimming generation is becoming more mentally superficial, unable to think in anything beyond the intellectually impoverishing currency of instant messages, emails, and short web posts. The historical consequences of Carr's observations are deeply worrying. In Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age, the Boston Globe columnist Maggie Jackson suggests that the increasingly low attention span and poor cognitive skills of today's multi - tasking, digitally addicted kids threatens to return civilisation to another dark age, one of what she calls "shadows and fears".
    • Victor Salinas
      Victor Salinas on 13 Feb 14
       
      Through the continual use of digital products, specifically the internet, our brains are starting to work differently. "It is eroding our ability to concentrate and contemplate intellectually, the mental requisites that allow us to read and digest books" (Andrew keen). Society has gotten so accustomed to information instantaneously that formal eduction is expected in the same fashion. Students are becoming less dependent on reading books and more dependent on browsing the internet.
Pallin Allar

The Future of Reading - Literacy Debate - Online, R U Really Reading? - Series - NYTime... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...27reading.html

shared by Pallin Allar on 14 Feb 14 - No Cached
  • regularly spends at least six hours a day in front of the computer
  • teenagers’ scores on standardized reading tests have declined or stagnated
  • — diminishing literacy, wrecking attention spans and destroying a precious common culture that exists only through the reading of books.
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  • At least since the invention of television, critics have warned that electronic media would destroy reading. What is different now, some literacy experts say, is that spending time on the Web, whether it is looking up something on Google or even britneyspears.org, entails some engagement with text.
Andrew Osbourne

How texting and social media affect our children? - 0 views

www.aboutourkids.org/...children_panel_discussion_csc_

social media negative effects learning

shared by Andrew Osbourne on 16 Feb 14 - No Cached
  • "Our youth now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for their elders and love chatter in place of exercise; they no longer rise when elders enter the room; they contradict their parents, chatter before company; gobble up their food and tyrannize their teachers."-Socrates
  • Fifty-four percent of teens send text messages, and one third of teens send more than 100 text messages per day. One third talk face-to-face with friends, around the same percentage that talk on cell phones (38 percent) and land lines (30 percent). Twenty-four percent communicate with friends via instant messages. Twenty-five percent contact friends via social networking sites. Eleven percent use e-mail.
  • Kids who see more TV learn to read later and slower.
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  • Participation for long periods of time can have a negative effect on basic cognitive processes. Overuse can have a negative impact on attention skills. The content of the information can have an effect on emotions and behavior.
  • Even when kids are watching "family friendly" shows like "Sponge Bob," there is an average 25 acts of violence per TV-viewing session.
  • Increased exposure to violence has been proven to result in: More aggressive behavior More aggressive thoughts More angry feelings Less empathy Fewer helping behaviors Increases in fear
  • kids aren't likely to see friends face-to-face, or even get phone calls
  • But many teens get text messages
  • Some teens send and receive hundreds of texts after 11 p.m.
  • More time on social media means less time on other activities, including academics.
  • BullyingBullying peaks during the middle school years, and online bullying carries its own set of heightened risks and considerations. Kids tend to be more likely to engage in bullying over the Web because it's harder to have empathy for your victim when you're not face-to-face with him or her. In online bullying, there is generally no audience who might rein in a bully by saying, "Hey, lay off." Others aren't aware of the bullying comment or action until after it has been posted for all to see. Adults can't overhear or witness what's happening when the perpetrator is alone in his or her room in front of a computer.
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