When Aaron started his lecture this morning, he said he expected us to use our cell phones or laptops for updating our statuses and all those other fun things we can do now in the age of instant information. This has been an interesting experiment for me because my dissertation is on Deep Reading, and thus far my experience has corroborated what a lot of my brain research has said: the brain cannot multitask.
Aaron's talk has been very interesting, and he has been advising us on the very direction I want to take my students and the publication. But, because I have been dutifully updating my statuses (including this blog), I find that I have missed whole chunks of his talk. Am I too old to multitask, am I a Digital Immigrant (not Digital Native) and so my brain is not wired to do such things, or can the brain not multitask regardless of age or gender?
Some research says that reading is not natural for our brains; we have to train our brains to concentrate on one thing and "re-wire" various connections in order to facilitate the process. In order to survive in the pre-civilized days of man, we had to be aware of our surroundings lest we become victims of nature's more unsavory elements. Therefore, reading requires us to undo years of evolution, a process that is critical the first 2000 days for our lives.
Deep reading states that we have concentrate on one thing when we read in order to facilitate the learning process and other higher thinking skills. The other side of the argument states that we are in the process of rewiring our brains and will eventually adapt to multitasking. An interesting gamble....
Aaron's talk is fascinating, and I look forward to reading his PowerPoint for deep reading and reflection and synthesis. In the meantime, I will now cease my multitasking -- or what other experts call partial tasking -- and give 100% of my attention to Aaron.
John Bradford
Creekview High School
Canton, GA
No comments:
Post a Comment