Portrait of a Digital Native

Reading the first paragraph of this article made me wonder about the effect of all the technology in terms of creating ADD! Sometimes when I’m in that mode of multitasking, I feel like this must be what people with ADD must feel like, completely overwhelmed by it all and often not knowing where to start. It definitely takes some getting used to, and I found myself initially averse to it.

However, the article makes some valid points that this mode of operating is what the younger generation has always known and been immersed in. I found the study that showed that a brain can be trained to “effectively self-organize competing information”, aka multitask, interesting - maybe that’s the piece I’m missing from my own comfort level with all this. This is excellent insight into today’s students – I will know better how to teach them and what to provide them with to engage them in learning. Society and the way we communicate has radically changed, shouldn’t the schools reflect that? If the students have changed so drastically, and I can see firsthand that they have, then our teaching has to change and grow along with that. Students don’t seem to be responding to traditional ways of teaching, so why not get on their level (that is simply different, not higher or lower) and try something new?

I can see such generational differences as Jane Healey writes about how students cannot possibly focus on anything in a deep, meaningful way, which of course, Fear disagrees with knowing that she is able to do so. This type of argument is just human nature. It’s the newest argument between the generations – there is something in every generation that cannot be imagined or understood by the generation before or after them.