[IAEP] A video about a 1-1 Apple laptop middle school in NYC - School Surveillance and a discussion on Multitasking

Bastien bastienguerry at googlemail.com
Fri Sep 4 15:48:16 EDT 2009


Caroline Meeks <caroline at solutiongrove.com> writes:

> http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/digitalnation/learning/schools/how-google-saved-a-school.html?play
>
> Towards the middle of the clip is an interview with the administrator who
> can observe the students on the laptops.  

Yes, and this is kinda scary.  It's not even clear whether students know
they are monitored (unless they receive a warning from the monitor!)

> Its also an interesting discussion about multi-tasking.

A teacher is giving this argument: "As an adult, I cannot sit and work
for more than one hour, I don't know why I should expect this from my
students." (... not literally what she says, please correct me if I
completely misunderstood.)

I don't buy this argument.

I think monotasking and multitasking require different attitudes and we
can learn how to improve our efficiency in both attitudes, but insisting
on learning how to multitask because "that's the way we work as adults"
does definitely sound wrong to me.

-- 
 Bastien


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