למידה, אינטרנט ... ומה שביניהם

Growing Up Digital, Wired for Distraction

I’m spending two hours to get a few seconds just right.

She grew up analog, became immersed in digital, but irrespective of the technology of the day, has always been wired for distraction. She considers this to be an asset for her as an educational leader in the very disruptive field of online learning.

The point is we measure our kids' deficits by our glowing and often inflated idea of how much better "we" (our entire generation, of course) were. This is not really a discussion about the biology of attention; it is about the sociology of change.

Our attention is shaped by all we do, and reshaped by all we do. That is what learning is.

Do we think that before technology, most students avoided distraction? Do we think they spent school-days sitting in lecture consumed with fascination for listening to a teacher talk about the Smoot Hawley tariff? Have you seen Ferris Buller’s Day Off, a film made before cell phones and laptops?

The question, though, is: distraction from what? And also: What’s inherently wrong with distraction? It seems to me that the real dichotomy here — to the extent, of course, that it’s fair to break any complex problem into reductive dualities — is less a matter of focus vs. distraction, and more a matter of the digital age’s spin-off opposition: interest vs. non-interest. Caring vs ... lack of.

And the digital era is bringing a new kind of empowerment not just to interest, but to aversion. The web is a space whose very abundance of information — and whose very informational infrastructure — trains our attention to follow our interests. And vice versa. In that, it’s empowering information as a function of interest.

תוויות: דיגיטאליות, הסח הדעת, נוער