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Children I’m particularly worried about because the brain is the last organ of the body to become anatomically mature.

It keeps growing until the mid-20s

If young students don’t build up the neural circuitry that focused attention requires, they could have

problems controlling their emotions and being empathetic.

“The circuitry for paying attention is identical for the circuits for managing distressing emotion,” Goleman said. The

brain that governs focus and executive functioning is known as the pre-frontal cortex.

allows people to control themselves,

and to feel empathy for other people.

who is well educated

attentional circuitry needs

to build the mental models

He advocates

“I don’t think the enemy is digital devices,” Goleman said.

digital sabbath

kids aren’t being distracted by devices at all.

to focus is a secret element to success that often gets ignored.

whatever talent you have, you can’t apply it if you are distracted,”

It’s very important to amp up the focus side of the equation,” Goleman said.

the role digital devices play in society today

affect kids better they’ll never learn the attention skills they’ll need to succeed in the long term.

need now to teach kids concentration abilities

students grew up with digital devices and are much better at multitasking

the idea of multitasking is a myth, Goleman said. When people say they’re  “multitasking,” what they are really doing is something called “continuous partial attention,”

as a student switches back and forth between homework and streaming through text messages, their ability to focus on either task erodes.

could have significant implications for how deeply a student understands a new concept.

be sure

sustained episodes of concentration — reading the text, understanding and listening

children has the attentional capacities that other generations had naturally before the distractions of digital devices.

using the devices smartly

hese complex and at times contradictory judgments emerge from 1) an online survey of more than 2,000 middle and high school teachers drawn from the Advanced Placement (AP) and National Writing Project (NWP) communities; and 2) a series of online and offline focus groups with middle and high school teachers and some of their students. The study was designed to explore teachers’ views of the ways today’s digital environment is shaping the research and writing habits of middle and high school students.  Building on the Pew Internet Project’s prior work about how people use the internet and, especially, the information-saturated digital lives of teens, this research looks at teachers’ experiences and observations about how the rise of digital material affects the research skills of today’s students.

Overall, teachers who participated in this study characterize the impact of today’s digital environment on their students’ research habits and skills as mostly positive, yet multi-faceted and no

t without drawbacks.

students can take advantage of the availability of educational material in engaging multimedia formats; and many become more self-reliant researchers.

hese teachers report that students rely mainly on search engines to conduct research, in lieu of other resources such as online databases, the news sites of respected news organizations, printed books, or reference librarians. Overall, the vast majority of these teachers say a top p

riority in today’s classrooms should be teaching students how to “judge the quality of online information

They also spend time constructing assignments that point students toward the best online resources and encourage the use of sources other than search engines.

The internet and digital technologies are significantly impacting how students conduct research: 77% of these teachers say the overall impact is “mostly positive,” but they sound many cautionary notes

sked to assess the overall impact of the internet and digital technologies on students’ research habits, 77% of these teachers say it has been “mostly positive.”  Yet, when asked if they agree or disagree with specific assertions about how the internet is impacting students’ research, their views are decidedly mixed.

n the more encouraging side, virtually all (99%) AP and NWP teachers in this study agree with the notion that the internet enables students to access a wider range of resources than would otherwise be available, and 65% also agree that the internet makes today’s students more self-sufficient researchers.

At the same time, 76% of teachers surveyed “strongly agree” with the assertion that internet search engines have conditioned students to expect to be able to find information quickly and easily. 

today is overwhelming to most students (83%) and that today’s digital technologies discourage students from using a wide range of sources when conducting research (71%).  Fewer teachers, but still a majority of this sample (60%), agree with the assertion that today’s technologies make it harder for students to find credible sources of information.

he internet has changed the very meaning of “research”

greatest impact

teachers sees

is the degree to which it has changed the very nature of “research” and what it means to “do research.

 94% of the teachers surveyed say their students are “very likely” to use Google or other online search engines in a typical research assignment, placing it well ahead of all other sources that we asked about.  Second and third on the list of frequently used sources are online encyclopedias such as Wikipedia, and social media sites such as YouTube.  In descending order, the sources teachers in our survey say students are “very likely” to use in a typical research assignment: Google or other online search engine (94%) Wikipedia or other online encyclopedia (75%) YouTube or other social media sites (52%) Their peers (42%) Spark Notes, Cliff Notes, or other study guides (41%) News sites of major news organizations (25%) Print or electronic textbooks (18%) Online databases such as EBSCO, JSTOR, or Grolier (17%) A research librarian at their school or public library (16%) Printed books other than textbooks (12%) Student-oriented search engines such as Sweet Search (10%)