Attention in the Digital Age
Year 7 to 12 parents and teachers
Technology increasingly affects on how student gain, renew, and fine-tune their knowledge and understanding. Networked devices provide information anywhere, anytime on a need-to-know-now basis. It is widely feared that the ease with which we access information is negatively and persistently impacting our capacity to learn, understand, and interact with others. The reduced ability to maintain attention is a key factor in the apparent negative influence of technology on learning in the digital age. But is this really true? There is a significant body of research that has shown ‘screen inferiority’ over conventional learning, but mainstream media often overstate the negative impact of technologies on attention and usually ignore the positive effects. Much work needs to be done to understand the effect of digital technology on learners, but there is no doubt that technology vendors are exploiting attentional processes to engage people with websites and applications for commercial gain. It is up to parents and educators to develop strategies and tactics to help students better manage their own attention.
Source: Brain health consequences of digital technology use.
Question: With so much online learning going on in 2021, how did your attention deficit span fare? Was it different for different subjects?
Casper Pieters PhD Dip Ed is an author and educator who uses adventure narratives to enliven the ICT curriculum for young people. www.casperpieters.com
