Rewired

Larry Rosen’s Rewired addresses a number of “hot topics” of interest to today’s educator. Because his work focuses in particular on young adolescents, the book is especially important for middle school educators. He does consider a number of themes (a sufficient number that I intend to focus on the book in multiple blog entries), including multiasking and wireless mobile devices (WMD’s).

An interview with Larry Rosen that was broadcast on National Public Radio is available here.

Multitasking is the mythic capability of young people (and others) to be able to perform more than one task at a time. A youngster who is instant messaging a friend on his or her computer, carrying on a text message conversation with another, and listening to music all while doing homework is multitasking. (So is his or her parent who is talking on the cell phone while driving.) Several years ago, there was some suggestion that young people where able to multitask better than adults; more recent research has questioned youngsters’ ability to do more than one task at a time. Rosen looks takes a closer at the evidence and suggests that youngsters are not multitasking, but they are quickly task-switching. He also concludes that educators must recognize this facts of young people’s lives and must develop strategies for accommodating this into expectations (he argues that “multitasking” youngsters will still accomplish tasks equally too youngsters who do not, but that but will take longer).

Rosen does use the acronym WMD to describe wireless mobile devices, which includes the cell phones, BlackBerries, iPhones, and similar devices students carry today. The emotional resonance of the terms is not list on the audience and Rosen does suggest these are having profound effect on how humans access information and how humans interaction. Again, Rosen recognizes the need for educators to develop strategies for surviving the effects of WMD’s on schools.