Steve Covey once said “The key is not to prioritize what’s on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.” Multitasking was once thought to be a person being able to do two things at once, research has shown that it is simply our thoughts switching from one task to another, taking us away from accomplishing the important and urgent tasks that need our attention. Multitasking simply switches our thoughts between two tasks, resulting in poor concentration on both tasks. We are putting too much focus today on the unimportant, non-urgent tasks, and unable to focus on what needs our immediate attention until sometimes it is too late. Sarah D. Sparks wrote an article discussing the affect that technology has on student’s test scores. Technology …show more content…
For example, texting while taking a test causes lower scores, due to not fully being able to concentrate on the test being taken. Multitasking has been proven to lower student performance on tests, also causing them to perform poorly on memory and attention tests. Students ranging from the ages of 13 to 18 are said to be on more than six kinds of media while outside of school hours. In the multitasking article it talks about the tendency “to pay continuous partial attention,” resulting in a person being unable to completely concentrate on anything. It takes a person longer to multitask than it does for the person to complete two separate tasks, one after the other. Having to make a choice while multitasking will end up delaying the other tasks you need to accomplish. Multitaskers do worse on memory and attention tests than those who do not multitask. The affect on a reader’s attention when he or she is distracted by a phone call, email, or text message while reading is that when they …show more content…
I am a mom of three, so of course I multitask, right? And with having three children, comes having more rooms in the house to clean. My children are all old enough to clean their rooms now, however when they were young, it was mostly me, the mom. I would always begin in one room in the house and work my way around to each and every room. Or at least that was my intention. I began in Jocelyn’s room and would come across something that needed to be taken to one of the boys’ rooms or the bathroom. So, of course, I would take it to that said room, see that the room I walked into needed some major cleaning, and it went on and on from there. I would call it bouncing from room to room, miraculously accomplishing the whole house cleaning, by what I would say was a great day full of multitasking; being able to clean in several different rooms all at the same time. Instead of feeling like we need to be doing several things at once, like getting all the rooms in the house clean right away, it is wise to make a list of the important things to get cleaned and which rooms would be considered more
As human beings, it is becoming more of a second nature to us to multi-task. As the world is technologically advancing more and more every day, there are becoming more distractions. Social-media is flourishing, reality TV show ratings are going up, and humans even unintentionally check their phones every two minutes. In this day of age, multi-tasking is proving to promote inefficiency rather than productivity.
In the chapter “Attention Deficit: The Brain Syndrome of Our Era,” from The New Brain, written by Richard Restak, Restak makes some very good points on his view of multitasking and modern technology. He argues that multitasking is very inefficient and that our modern technology is making our minds weaker. Multitasking and modern technology is causing people to care too much what other people think of them, to not be able to focus on one topic, and to not be able to think for themselves.
In the article,“Multitasking is actually kind of a problem for kids and adults” by Hayley Tsukayama the author went into detail about how parents and their children view their personal media habits. One of the ways that the parents and children viewed their media habits as was feeling the need to respond to texts and notifications immediately. “More than 1,200 parents and teens surveyed, 48 percent of parents and 72 percent of teens said they felt the need to respond to texts and notifications immediately, almost guaranteeing distractions throughout the day” (Tsukayama). This article can be connected to “The Epidemic of Media Multitasking While Learning” both of the articles discussed the different factors of media multitasking among individuals. The article from The Washington Post website gave great insight on multitasking and rather it is bad for students when it comes to learning. I believe that the issue being discussed is very relevant because if students are easily distracted by technology while in their learning environment it results in them not learning
Students may easily lose their attention and concentration with easy access to such incredibly rich store of information. With such new technologies as television, internet and social networks, people nowadays tend to multitask more often as they have easy access to a large amount of information. However, such easy access may sometimes be a distraction. Study “Your Brain on Computers” reports that heavy multitaskers perform up to 20% worse on most tests compared to performance of light multitaskers. Working efficiency of people, who multitask, is claimed to be significantly lower. The same is with concentration. (Crovitz 353) As a result, they are not engaged in working process. Students tend to be easily distr...
Originally this category was titled technology and assessments, but I needed to make the category larger in scope to fit in some of the more “specialized” articles. This article was published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2009 by Edy S. Quellmalz and James W. Pellegrino was simply titled, “Technology and Testing”. Although the focus of this work centered on large-scale testing, there was some helpful dialogue surrounding classroom-based assessments that proved useful. The main idea of this article was that besides the obvious advantage of quick, accurate scoring and feedback, technological applications can be used to provide “rich, authentic tasks that challenge the sorts of integrated knowledge, critical thinking, and problem solving seldom well addressed in paper-based tests” (Quellmalz & Pellegrino, 75). In other words, these two authors strongly feel technological based assessments are superior to paper-based assessments, and thus will yield greater results. They go on to say that this shift in assessment is a crucial part of 21st-century learning and will continue to improve and develop. Already this can be seen within districts as they struggle to implement the PARCC throughout their schools. In their discussion of classroom instructional uses of technology-based assessments, the authors reaffirm the benefits of formative assessments if they
In the article, “Multitasking Can Make You Lose…Um…Focus,” Alina Tugend centralizes around the negative effects of multitasking. She shows that often with multitasking, people tend to lose focus, lack work quality, have an increase in stress, and in the end she gives a solution to all these problems. Tugend conveys her points by using understandable language, a clear division of subjects, and many reliable sources, making her article cogent.
Multitasking requires that a worker divides his/her time and energy on multiple tasks at the same time. As a result, the care and attention to detail is divided. The amount of focus that could be used to review one assignment is split. In an experiment, Patterson (2017) discovered that students who studied while participating in media multitasking took longer to complete tasks in their classes. This experiment addresses media multitasking in the case of students. While it is not a type of multitasking we normally consider, it does involve performing multiple tasks at one. Instead of putting all of their focus on their assignments, these students’ attention is on the assignment and on their social media. The results of the experiment prove that it when placed in scenarios where people are required to focus on multiple things, it takes more time to complete certain tasks. In this instance, media multitasking caused a decrease in performance. In another experiment, Paridon and Kaufmann (2010) made an observation when studying multitasking in the workplace, stating that people’s reaction time diminished when multiple tasks were completed at once. The believe that multitasking affects people’s performance has also been proven to be true in the workplace, as the speed of people’s production when down when required to complete multiple tasks. Performance can be determined by the speed in which a task is completed.
Technology has always been improving over the decades, and now it has improved to the point where it’s a part of a human being’s life. People can’t imagine living without technology anymore nowadays, and especially college students who are always on their phones and laptops during lectures. That leads to what is known as multitasking, which is the ability to take care of more than one task at the same time. Multitasking has been popularized by students, and specifically college students, who think that they are actually successful at doing it. Unfortunately, according to Digital Nation: Life on the Virtual Frontier, after testing students who think they are brilliant at multitasking, results showed that they are terrible at every aspect of multitasking; consequently, it is not successful.
Multitasking with non-course material results in a student’s attention being diverted from the course material that is being taught. This can result in errors in memory for the student and also a more difficult time learning the information outside of the classroom (Kraushaar & Novak, 2010, p.1). The University of Vermont completed a study in order to determine the impacts of multitasking with a laptop during a university lecture. Through the experiment they were able to determine that “students with a high [and long] frequency of software multitasking during lectures will exhibit lower academic performance than students with a low [and short] frequency of software multitasking” (Kraushaar & Novak, 2010, p.6). This shows that repeated and lengthy multitasking with technology in particular laptops during lecture times can cause extremely negative results in a students academic performances and
" 51.9 (2008): 1352-1375. Web. 13 Nov. 2013. Schacter, John. " The Impact of Education Technology on Student Achievement."
Cell phones may be the top of devices those distract students in class. The ubiquitous problem originates from the cell phones. I’m also a high school student, I can see some of my classmates use it for texting every day in class instead of listening to the teacher. Students also use it for playing video games, listening to music, watching videos. And definitely, while you are playing with your phones, you will not be able to absorb the lesson that the teacher is trying to teach. It’s not easy to do two things at the same time, except you are super. Have you ever tried to draw a circle by your left hand and draw a rectangle by the other hand simultaneously? When you do two things or more at the same time, your brain will just focus on one thing and naturally ignore the other. As Peter Bregman wrote in the Harvard Business Review Blog Network that multitasking can reduce productivity by as much as 40%, increase stress and cause a 10-point fall in IQ.
Wenglinsky, H. (1998). Does it compute? The relationship between educational technology and student achievement in mathematics. Princeton, NJ: Educational Testing Service. Retrieved March 6, 2002, from ftp://ftp.ets.org/pub/res/technolog.pdf.
Multitasking is a poor long-term strategy for learning. People can’t filter out irrelevancy because multitasking has become a habit. A majority of people have the misconception multitasking will help them accomplish tasks in a faster manner, yet it does the complete opposite. Multitasking is not doing a plethora of tasks all at once, but rather switching from one task to another in a continuous cycle. Each time the brain switches task, there is lag time between that adds up. Multitasking distracts people from doing the task before them, so learning and memory becomes spotted and limited, and it doesn’t help that there is technology constantly at people’s fingertips. Multitasking is a poor strategy to to use why trying to complete a job. Multitasking has negative benefits in all aspects of life and is a habit that needs to be broken.
Over the past few years technology has taken on a whole new meaning. We have moved from the days of chalkboards, to whiteboards, to interactive whiteboards. Our students seem to be more computer savvy than their teachers. Home telephones are starting to become a thing of the past, and cell phones have turned into mini-computers. Technological geniuses have even tried to eliminate books by creating electronic books, for example the Kindle and Nook. It has become pretty evident that being technologically smart is a necessity in today's world.
Computers are helping students get better grades in school, from help with homework over the internet to doing research for an essay at the local library. According to Rother (2004), "Technology has become ingrained in the educational process. It increases teacher productivity in a daily basis, enhanced student performance on key subjects, and improves student results in standardized tests."