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Students have always faced distractions and time-wasters. But computers and cellphones, and the constant stream of stimuli they offer, pose a profound new challenge to focusing and learning.

“Their brains are rewarded not for staying on task but for jumping to the next thing,”

Unchecked use of digital devices, he says, can create a culture in which students are addicted to the virtual world and lost in it.

But first, a caveat: there are exceptions to every generalization I am about to make.

irresolvable paradox that, without writing, we would not have Plato's staging of this discussion nor any record at all of Socrates' encounter with Phaedrus or of the Socratic method, nor indeed would there have been an Athens, as such, to remember.

Plato’s struggle with the relatively new technology of writing

With the huge potential that Information and communication technology has to offer for teaching and learning also comes a matching potential for distraction, illicit and inappropriate activity, and poor judgement.

The teacher holds a cornerstone role in the development of understanding, the appreciation of culture and diversity, and the formation of the moral and ethical basis that, like the cornerstone of a building, provides a strong and stable foundation for life in both the real and virtual world they co-inhabit.

The most salient lessons are not learned by avoidance but by facing you action, its impact, and the consequences.

you can visit that world and offer your students some of its benefits -- like fluency with online collaboration and communication -- from right where you are

You hear two opinions from experts on the topic of what happens when kids are perpetually exposed to technology. One: Constant multitasking makes teens work harder, reduces their focus, and screws up their sleep. Two: Using technology as a youth helps students adapt to a changing world in a way that will benefit them when they eventually have to live and work in it. Either of these might be true. More likely, they both are. But it is certainly the case that these kids are different—fundamentally and permanently different—from previous generations in ways that are sometimes surreal, as if you'd walked into a room where everyone is eating with his feet.

It's as if Beatlemania junkies in 1966 had had the ability to demand "Rain" be given as much radio time as "Paperback Writer," and John Lennon thought to tell everyone what a good idea that was. The fan–celebrity relationship has been so radically transformed that even sending reams of obsessive fan mail seems impersonal.

The teens' brains move just as quickly as teenage brains have always moved, constructing real human personalities, managing them, reaching out to meet others who might feel the same way or want the same things. Only, and here's the part that starts to seem very strange—they do all this virtually. Sitting next to friends, staring at screens, waiting for the return on investment. Everyone so together that they're actually all apart.