On Tuesday, the FRONTLINE documentary Digital Nation explored what it means to be human in a 21st-century digital world consumed by technology and the impact that this constant connectivity may have on future generations.  While you can draw your own conclusions from the program (available in its entirety here as well as below), the issues of multitasking, the role of technology in learning, and the losses that accompany change resonated with me as a parent and educator.

The Multitasking Myth

Most teenagers (and many adults) believe themselves to be competent multitaskers, capable of simultaneously emailing-texting-surfing-listening to music-you name it while attending to other tasks such as driving, studying, or even having a conversation.  Stanford professor Clifford Nass has been studying the effectiveness of self-proclaimed multitaskers, and his research confirms the multitasking myth. As he concludes, “It turns out multitaskers are terrible at every aspect of multitasking. They get distracted constantly. Their memory is very disorganized. Recent work we’ve done suggests they’re worse at analytic reasoning.  We worry that it may be creating people who are unable to think well and clearly.”

These finding are not surprising, but the potential long-term effects are quite disturbing when set against the backdrop of our technology-rich homes and classrooms.  University professors are already seeing the toll that constant, multitasking-driven distraction has taken on writing; students compose paragraphs, not cohesive compositions, because they can’t maintain focus for extended periods of time and see how the parts must relate to the whole.  Write a paragraph; update Facebook status.  Write a second paragraph; check email.  Write the required number of paragraphs; assignment finished.

Unfortunately and despite the research, secondary schools may be encouraging and reinforcing the wrong habits.  One of the teachers interviewed for the program stated that schools need to actively teach multitasking because it is such an important life skill.  Attempting to teach that which cannot be learned is not in anyone’s best interests.  Perhaps a better approach would be to critically examine the role technology plays in learning.

Teaching with Technology

Digital Nation’s producers visited a middle school in the south Bronx that has completely embraced technology in the classroom.  Student laptops have been credited with saving the school by improving discipline and test scores, reducing truancy, and establishing a 21st century learning environment.  They view technology like oxygen; ubiquitous, necessary, and something never to be withheld.  For many educators, their model of teaching with technology could be considered the ideal.

Others, however, are less enthusiastic.  Todd Oppenheimer, author of The Flickering Mind, is concerned that technology can dampen students’ attention span, create boredom, and lead to “instant gratification education”. He contends that the ability to click on a whim can “bifurcate the brain, keeps it from being able to pursue one linear thought, and teaches you that you should be able to have every urge answered the minute the urge occurs.”

Any school that uses technology has experienced at least some of the successes and problems featured in the program; most schools live somewhere between these extremes.  Technology is neither education’s savior or scourge, and balance is achieved by weighing the risk against the reward.  Is higher academic achievement worth a diminishing of our collective patience? Is the self-guided engagement that a computer provides worth decreased human interaction?  The answers to these subjective questions are beyond the scope of this space (and Digital Nation itself), but one thing is clear; technology facilitates change, and change comes at a price.

With Change Comes Loss

An unpleasant reality mentioned throughout the program was the loss that accompanies change.  The advent of writing shifted us away from being an oral culture, and consequently we lost some of our ability to remember.  The mass production of text enabled a wider variety of writers to be published, and as a result our language has lost some of its beauty and sophistication.  Living and learning in a digital society will lead to loss as well, and there’s nothing we can do about it.

The importance of factual knowledge, the development of interpersonal skills, even the role of teachers in the classroom will change (and have changed) as a result of technology.  It may be hard to accept, but as the producers noted, “We grew up in a world anchored in pages you turn.  Maybe there is something these kids are getting that we’re not sure how to value yet.”  Our students are getting the ability to acquire knowledge, process information, and demonstrate understanding in new and amazing ways; I think that’s something we can all value.

Time Well Spent

If you haven’t done so already, I would encourage you to set aside some time to watch Digital Nation and explore the online resources for parents and teachers.  The program raises more questions than it answers, but if it generates conversation regarding how best to serve our students, it should be considered time well spent.

As a veteran Tablet PC user and iPhone enthusiast, I eagerly joined the masses today for Apple’s unveiling of their long-awaited tablet-like device, the iPad.  Thin, light, and blazing fast, it is Apple’s “most advanced technology in a magical and revolutionary device at an unbelievable price.”

Twitter was overflowing with iPad tweets hours after Steve Jobs left the stage, and while opinions varied, there was no shortage of people ready to place an order when the product starts shipping in late March.  Unfortunately, a good number of those early adopters will be teachers.

Somewhere lost among all the rhetoric about how “cool” it would be to have students read colorful iBooks, flip through digital photos, and watch high resolution videos is the fact that the iPad is designed for consuming rather than producing, and students need to create.  The iPad may be great for reading, but try composing and revising a document using a virtual keyboard and your finger as a mouse.  Similarly, importing images may be a snap, but how practical is it to manipulate and store media on a 16 GB hard drive?  And video?  Unless it comes from a camera phone and doesn’t need editing,  forget about it.

Jobs’ characterization of netbooks as nothing more than “cheap computers” and assertion that the iPad can do “thousands of things a tablet PC or e-reader can’t” are misleading.  A “cheap” netbook like those our 5th graders use can Skype with other classrooms, create Google Earth tours, compose blog posts, publish podcasts, edit images and video, and share digital stories.  The Tablet PCs our older students have leverage the note-taking capabilities of DyKnow and OneNote, the ink-enabled computational power of FluidMath, and the editing features of Photoshop and Premiere.

Is there an app for that kind of learning?  I didn’t think so.

If you are an educator and want an iPad because of how well it lets you experience the web, by all means get out your credit card and start counting the days; I absolutely love my iPhone and I’m sure replicating the touch screen experience on a 9.7″ scale is nothing short of amazing.  But if you want your students to use technology to communicate, collaborate, and create, pass on the iPad and use your limited funds to get something “cheap” but useful; kids deserve better than a shiny new fad.

Last year I began an occasional series of brief posts dedicated to featuring books, articles, and research papers that can foster professional growth.  It’s well past time to revive that concept, and as a first offering for the new year I highly recommend The Atlantic’s What Makes a Great Teacher? by Amanda Ripley.  Featured in the January/February issue, Ripley’s story attempts to address this timeless question using recently released data from Teach America, a non-profit organization dedicated to placing high-quality teachers in low-income communities.

The impact of great teaching is well documented if not well understood.  A decade ago, Robert Marzano found that school-level and teacher-level factors account for approximately 20 percent of the variance in student achievement.  While this  may not seem significant, a student scoring at the 50th percentile who spends two years in an average school, with an average teacher, is likely to continue scoring at the 50th achievement percentile.  Spending two years in a highly effective classroom with a highly effective teacher, however, can raise achievement to the 96th percentile (Marzano, 2003).

What, then, makes for a great teacher?  In reviewing student achievement data, Teach for America found that highly effective teachers “constantly reevaluate what they are doing, avidly recruited students and their families into the process,  maintained focus, ensuring that everything they did contributed to student learning, planned exhaustively and purposefully by working backward from the desired outcome, and they worked relentlessly, refusing to surrender to the combined menaces of poverty, bureaucracy, and budgetary shortfalls.”

In evaluating which traits would best predict teacher effectiveness, Teach for America found that long-regarded qualities such as reflection and self-awareness did not matter nearly as much as a high degree of “life satisfaction” and a track record of perseverance.  Recognizing these characteristics is but one step toward school improvement; current practitioners must be evaluated in terms of their effectiveness as well.  And while test scores should not be the only yardstick for success, charisma, ambitious lesson objectives, and communication skills are not sufficient benchmarks unto themselves.

Whether you are a pre-service educator or a seasoned veteran, I hope you’ll find time to read Ripley’s article and learn more about what separates good from great teachers; the answers, which I’ve only briefly touched on here, may surprise you.

N.B.  As background reading, you may wish to consider School, Teacher, and Leadership Impacts on Student Achievement by Kirsten Miller.