Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Brain on Google vs. Reading

How Technology Wires the Learning Brain
http://mindshift.kqed.org/2011/02/how-technology-wires-the-learning-brain/

"Kids between the ages of 8 and 18 spend 11.5 hours a day using technology — whether that’s computers, television, mobile phones, or video games – and usually more than one at a time. That’s a big chunk of their 15 or 16 waking hours."


9 comments:

  1. I JUST started reading the book "The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to our Brains." If...make that WHEN I come across some thought-provoking passages, I will post them here.
    I'm happy the dudes in the video recognize that researchers don't know if the brain-use differences are good or bad, and frankly, don't know what it all means yet. It is all very fascinating! Good post Kate!

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  2. Very interesting; thanks for posting, Kate! And Jane, I'll be interested to see what you find in "The Shallows" - please do share them here. :)

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  4. The NYTs had a really provocative series of articles entitled, "Your brain on computers", where the authors seemed to take a much more negative stance on the cumulative effect of technology (i.e. Google) upon our neural hardwiring. I'm an ardent proponent of technology use in education, I work at a 6-12 school and I've seen and used technology in some really effective and positive ways to help students as they find and evaluate info, as well as also collaborate and then produce information. But I also notice what I perceive as a growing inability to focus for extended periods of time, as well as a type of superficial reading that is displayed by a limited comprehension and lack of deeper analytical thought, especially in regards to encounters with text, be it on a computer screen or from a book. And that makes me concerned. As Dr. Smaller said in the above video, we don't know the effect of technology upon our brains, yet, but there are some scary trends developing in many users. Check out some of the series of articles from the NYTs here:

    http://tinyurl.com/4mwt2z9

    http://tinyurl.com/2fe7vfg

    http://tinyurl.com/2a6auky

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  5. I wonder if the "superficial reading" we're seeing is because text is actually a suboptimal method of knowledge transfer. It was dominant for so long because a) it was the only non-face-to-face teaching method that was technologically viable, and b) assessments of academic and economic success were biased towards people who got more out of text. The brains of most people probably learn better when more of their senses are engaged. At every public library, movies are more popular than books. Even for non-fiction, self-education inquiries, patrons often indicate their first choice would be a DVD over a book. Youth today *know* there are other media options and find it hard to be stimulated by text only. The trouble is text is still technologically easiest to produce, and we still subconsciously presume that text is preferable and its use is a greater indicator of success. If we do a better job of educating everyone on how to produce images and video and audio themselves, and break away from the text-is-best assumption, I wonder if fewer people would be academically and economically marginalized.

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  6. Great comment--I need to consider this idea of text as suboptimal for learning. Very interesting.

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  7. So this video clip comparing the brain of someone reading a book vs. conducting a google search is a bit too surface to really illustrate anything conclusive. I get that the google searcher was potentially actively making decisions of where to click next and this might stimulate more of the brain. Maybe we need to bring back the "choose your own adventure" format to prove that the book reader's brain can compete with the google brain. That's a joke. Kinda.

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  8. I am reminded of these articles from The Atlantic published within the last few years: The first entitled "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" (http://bit.ly/cXNeCU)

    and the riposte "Get Smarter" http://bit.ly/d52a6n

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  9. you know every thing c lets make thing better

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