FOCUSING ON ONE TASK
JO-ANN C. MARIMLA
Little do teachers know it, but the practice of texting and posting Facebook status online is universal among students while in class – as long as they get away with it.
This frustrates teachers, because once you catch a student tinkering with his phone and then asks him what has just been discussed on the board, the student almost always pulls a blank, as they say. He has no idea.
It seems that young people believe they can do many things at once, but this is not true. If they’re paying attention to their phone, then they’re not paying attention to what’s going on in class.
Teachers may take excessive steps to avoid this in class, but isn’t technology now becoming an intentional part of classroom activities and homework assignments? That is the irony, isn’t it?
Educators are actually using social media sites like Facebook and Twitter to communicate with their students, have students collaborate on projects, and even assign homework. But there is growing concern about the use of laptops, tablets, cell phones, and other technology for purposes quite apart from schoolwork, because nowadays, it is quite difficult to police the line between approved and illicit use by students.
Among the most common digital activities students undertake while learning are texting and posting on Facebook and other social media. This poses as a problem, according to researchers, because this entails mentally complex operations – much like what is demanded by schoolwork.
There is a firm line on the brain’s ability to multitask, according to psychology professor David Meyer. He said that under most conditions, the brain simply cannot do two complex tasks at the same time, but can happen only when the two tasks are both very simple and when they don’t compete with each other for the same mental resources.
He also said that it’s difficult for anyone to properly evaluate how well his or her own mental processes are operating, he points out, because most of these processes are unconscious.
Students may like to do it, or may even be addicted to it, but there’s no getting around the fact that it’s far better to focus on one task from start to finish, the professor said. — oOo— The author is Teacher III at Sinura Elementary School