=========================================== Assignment #01 - Multi-tasking and Homework =========================================== - Ian! D. Allen - idallen@idallen.ca - www.idallen.com Available in digital dropbox: 4pm Fri Sep 11, 2009 Due date in Blackboard Digital Dropbox: due at start of Wednesday lecture - 4pm Wed Sep 16 2009. Upload drop box file name template: abcd0001_01_mulitask.txt Use your own userid, not abcd0001. The rest of the name must be exactly as given. Typing mistakes in the name mean no credit. Be precise. (Yes, this name above is not spelled correctly. Use the given spelling.) Upload only plain text, not HTML, not MSWord. No fonts. Plain text only. Plain text only. Did I mention that the format is plain text? Read these essay excerpts (or the original essays from which they are taken), answer the question at the bottom, and upload your answer. You don't need to upload these essays as part of your answer. Only upload your answer itself. Did I mention that the format is plain text? --------------------------------------- Essays on how multi-tasking changes our attention: "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" [excerpts] http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200807/google "Over the past few years I've had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory. My mind isn't going-so far as I can tell-but it's changing. I'm not thinking the way I used to think. I can feel it most strongly when I'm reading. Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy. My mind would get caught up in the narrative or the turns of the argument, and I'd spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That's rarely the case anymore. Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. I feel as if I'm always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle. I think I know what's going on. For more than a decade now, I've been spending a lot of time online, searching and surfing and sometimes adding to the great databases of the Internet. [...] The faster we surf across the Web-the more links we click and pages we view-the more opportunities Google and other companies gain to collect information about us and to feed us advertisements. Most of the proprietors of the commercial Internet have a financial stake in collecting the crumbs of data we leave behind as we flit from link to link-the more crumbs, the better. The last thing these companies want is to encourage leisurely reading or slow, concentrated thought. It's in their economic interest to drive us to distraction. [...] I'm haunted by that scene in 2001. What makes it so poignant, and so weird, is the computer's emotional response to the disassembly of its mind: its despair as one circuit after another goes dark, its childlike pleading with the astronaut-"I can feel it. I can feel it. I'm afraid"-and its final reversion to what can only be called a state of innocence. HAL's outpouring of feeling contrasts with the emotionlessness that characterizes the human figures in the film, who go about their business with an almost robotic efficiency. Their thoughts and actions feel scripted, as if they're following the steps of an algorithm. In the world of 2001, people have become so machinelike that the most human character turns out to be a machine. That's the essence of Kubrick's dark prophecy: as we come to rely on computers to mediate our understanding of the world, it is our own intelligence that flattens into artificial intelligence." "The Autumn of the Multitaskers" "Neuroscience is confirming what we all suspect: Multitasking is dumbing us down and driving us crazy." http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200711/multitasking/ "Multitasking messes with the brain in several ways. At the most basic level, the mental balancing acts that it requires-the constant switching and pivoting-energize regions of the brain that specialize in visual processing and physical coordination and simultaneously appear to shortchange some of the higher areas related to memory and learning. We concentrate on the act of concentration at the expense of whatever it is that we're supposed to be concentrating on. What does this mean in practice? Consider a recent experiment at UCLA, where researchers asked a group of 20-somethings to sort index cards in two trials, once in silence and once while simultaneously listening for specific tones in a series of randomly presented sounds. The subjects' brains coped with the additional task by shifting responsibility from the hippocampus-which stores and recalls information-to the striatum, which takes care of rote, repetitive activities. Thanks to this switch, the subjects managed to sort the cards just as well with the musical distraction-but they had a much harder time remembering what, exactly, they'd been sorting once the experiment was over. Even worse [...]" This essay is a real gem, with many examples related to student learning. "The next generation, presumably, is the hardest-hit. They're the ones way out there on the cutting edge of the multitasking revolution, texting and instant messaging each other while they download music to their iPod and update their Facebook page and complete a homework assignment and keep an eye on the episode of The Hills flickering on a nearby television. (A recent study from the Kaiser Family Foundation found that 53 percent of students in grades seven through 12 report consuming some other form of media while watching television; 58 percent multitask while reading; 62 percent while using the computer; and 63 percent while listening to music. "I get bored if it's not all going at once," said a 17-year-old quoted in the study.) They're the ones whose still-maturing brains are being shaped to process information rather than understand or even remember it. [...] It begins by giving us more tasks to do, making each task harder to do, and dimming the mental powers required to do them. It finishes by making us forget exactly how on earth we did them (assuming we didn't give up, or "multi-quit"), which makes them harder to do again." --------------------------------------- Question: Given that studies show that multi-tasking makes it harder for your brain to remember what you have been doing (see above), does your method of doing school homework suffer from multi-tasking? Would it be possible for you to single-task your schoolwork, to remember it better come exam time (and job interview time)? Do you find that your brain has been trained to "process information rather than understand or even remember it"? Discuss any or all of the above questions. Minimum length: one feeble, insubstantial, wimpy paragraph. Maximum length: five single-spaced pages (plus optional bibliography and/or references). You don't need to upload these essays as part of your answer. Only upload your answer itself. Did I mention that the uploaded format must be plain text? -- | Ian! D. Allen - idallen@idallen.ca - Ottawa, Ontario, Canada | Home Page: http://idallen.com/ Contact Improv: http://contactimprov.ca/ | College professor (Free/Libre GNU+Linux) at: http://teaching.idallen.com/ | Defend digital freedom: http://eff.org/ and have fun: http://fools.ca/