Multitasking Madness: Performing at our peak feels good...

In The Winter of Our Disconnect, Susan Maushart (2011) admits that working at our peak often feels like play. So all that time that digital natives spend on social media while completing there homework is, in fact, energy spent on learning the technical skills and literacy needed for success in the contemporary world.

Collaborative Facebook games, like Farmville, appear to the digitally ignorant like an investment in building a world of virtual nothingness, but in actually, research shows that Digital Natives are in fact learning online cooperation and social etiquette, according to Maushart (2011). They are learning 21^st century project management and how to complete projects by assessing global social collateral and resources.

Man caught multitasking on the train.

In Rewired: Understanding the iGeneration and the Way They Learn, Larry Rosen (2010) argues that the technology at the fingertips of the iGeneration lends itself to multitasking; what else is there to do when carrying around a computer in your pocket, but to multitask?

Rosen (2010) points out that laboratory research shows that university students make lots of mistake multitasking under the conditions of the studies, but he argues that most of the iGeneration don’t work under those same artificial time restraints. In fact, multitasking (in technology terms) does take longer to produce results, but that no more mistakes are made in the final products as unitasking. And he argues that in some circumstances that up to 46% more can be accomplished by those who use technology on the go. So, the viral image of the guy sitting on the subway floor working on his dissertation -because a new baby awaited him at home- illustrates how multitaskers can utilize time lost to a digit defunct unitasker.

How to manhandle multitasking in the classroom?

I recently gave my students, in an upper division content-based EFL conversation class, a three-part midterm project. First, they are to submit an individual blog answering the following questions:

(1) As a Korean student of the English language, why is it important to study culture?  

(2) What is the most interesting thing that you’ve learned so far in the class?

Next, the students will work in groups to complete the final two parts of the project using a Google chrome app called Mural.ly. Mural.ly is a brain storming collaborative app that allows students to work remotely to build visual/text essays that relies heavily on the iGeneration’s unique form of literacy.

For the second part of the project, the student groups will provide two visual/video examples for the following terms: cultural specific, cultural universal, transcultural, and localization. They will use virtual sticky notes and symbols to justify their examples and to show interconnectivity between the categories. In essence, the class is building a collaborative mind map that will “show” what culture is to them collectively.

Next, the students will find a music video with many transcultural references. They will produce a similar Mural.ly mind map explaining how the transcultural references are localized (made uniquely Korean) by comparing them with Western or other Asian examples of the same idea/product.

Students will present and discuss both mind maps to/with the class.

While designing the project, I thought my students were going to freak-out. I was afraid they were going to think it was too much work and perhaps, too complicated.

Image borrowed from: http://daltondenhaag.
globalstudies.nl/2010/10/28/texting-or-tv/

Instead, they spent a half hour totally engaged with each other as they figured out how to assess Blogger and Mural.ly on their cellphones. They collaborated until everyone was able to assess the apps or until there was a solution for all. Next, they worked together while exploring Mural.ly. They obviously loved the features and immediately understood what I wanted from their projects. #I had designed their project to resemble how I had taught them the materials.

They were technically tied together and the students were comfortable in their native environment. I wish that I could have bottled their enthusiasm.

I will post the results of their collaborative projects at the end of the month.