California Educator

FEBRUARY 2010

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eneration yet gear my curriculum so students can expe- rience success as quickly as possible. It’s motivation for them to want to learn more and take it to the next level.” “They need constant feedback because of the immediacy technology has given them,” agrees Duane Mendoza, a technol- ogy resource teacher at E.O. Green Junior High School in Oxnard. “Their attention span seems to be a bit less than their coun- terparts in previous years.” Multitasking marvels Every generation, for better or for worse, has a set of characteristics that define them. For Gen Z, the dominant trait is that they are masters of multitasking and can talk, text, listen to music and look up informa- tion on the Web without missing a beat. “I’ve seen them text, have conversations and be on the computer at the same time,” says Jennifer Kennedy of New Technology High School in Sacramento. “They don’t think about turning things off to engage in discussions. In their minds, they can do it all at the same time.” Some mental health experts believe that a constant stream of electronic information is causing a form of technology-induced at- tention deficit disorder. John Raley, an as- sociate clinical professor of psy- chiatry at Harvard Medical School, uses the term “acquired attention deficit disorder” and says that technology is rewiring the modern brain. Elias Aboujaude, director of Stanford University’s Impulse Control Disorders Clinic, has expressed concern that young people are losing the ability to analyze complex information. “The more we become used Francisco Chronicle. “And I do think we might lose the ability to analyze things with any depth and nuance.” A study by three Stanford Peggy Cameron Las Virgenes Classi- fied Association to just sound bites and tweets, the less pa- tient we will be with more complex, more meaningful information,” he told the San University researchers conclud- ed that people bombarded with several streams of electronic in- formation don’t pay attention, control memory or switch from one job to another as well as those who complete one task at a time. The study was aimed at “high-tech jugglers keeping up several e-mail and instant mes- sage conversations at once, text messaging while watching tele- vision and jumping from one website to another while plowing through home- work assignments.” ABOVE: Jennifer Kennedy at New Technology High School in Sacramento. John Jabagchourian, assistant professor of child and adolescent development at San Jose State University, believes the study’s findings have been blown out of proportion, because the differences be- tween heavy multitaskers and others were only a matter of milliseconds. “I’m not worried about it,” says the Cal- ifornia Faculty Association member. “Ev- ery generation thinks the next generation may be changing for the worse and then asks, ‘What are we going to do about it?’” Computers have blurred the line be- tween the workplace and home for adults, and the same is true for today’s students, FEBRUARY 2010 | www.cta.org 11

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