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The process involves so much physical manipulation of the computer that it interferes with our ability to focus on and appreciate what we're reading

multimedia features, such as links to videos and animations, leave little room for imagination, limiting our ability to form our own mental pictures to illustrate what we're reading.

The visual happenings on the screen… and your physical interaction with the device is distracting," Mangen says. "All of these things are taxing on cognition and concentration in a way that a book is not."

I learned the secret of Twitter: don’t try to keep up.

Don’t follow a lot of people.

Don’t tweet too much.

This quote struck me on many levels. Specifically, the notion of being distracted in the "other features" seemed to be a loaded statement. Do students consider exploring outside the realm of what is defined as "learning" as a distraction? Isn't exploring different facets of an application just as important as using it for its intended purpose? This led me to consider how many educators have so poisoned students thinking that being "off-task" is even considered to be a bad thing. Have we so stymied students that they believe if they are not formally "learning," if they become "sidetracked," that they are wasting their time? When did curiosity become a negative thing? (When it killed the proverbial cat, I suppose.) As I think about it, if young adults find new media a distraction, then perhaps "learning" has become too narrowly defined. This then led me to wonder how we can "measure" self-directed learning in this new media context? In other words, how can we show the different levels of learning that takes place in these new contexts?

Sexy examples, it seems, distract from the learning task. The researchers aren't suggesting that teachers start using boring examples, either -- what's best is to present only information that's relevant to what's being learned. Adding in irrelevant examples, especially the juicy ones, only makes learning more difficult.

In the study, the irrelevant materials were about 30 percent of the total material presented. Maybe if attention-getting examples could be reduced to, say, 10 percent of the total, they'd serve their purpose without getting in the way of learning.

f most students have laptops, why are they still having physically to come to a lecture hall? Why can’t they get a podcast of the lecture? Second, if they are coming, why are the lecturers not requiring them to use their laptops for study?

So, yes, there are occasions when lectures work very well. But they should not be the default model for regular teaching in higher education. There are much better ways to teach that will result in better learning over the length of a course or program.