Rewired for Studying

 It’s that time of the year—everyone has spring fever! Despite the rain we’ve had this week, we know that any day that sun is going to break out, the temperatures are going to climb, and school will be out.

But right now, in school, it’s serious spring fever time!!  No matter what grade level your child is in, they have spring fever and are literally counting the days down until it is summer vacation. 

My colleagues and I were having a discussion about spring fever and very quickly the conversation turned to “kids today”. 

“When we were in school, the teacher just told us the information, said we had to learn it, and we did,” said a friend of mine.

Another chimed in, “Yeah, and we sat there while the teacher taught and we took all the information in and studied.”

I’ve said it before, and I’ll  say it again, kids today are different.  Kids today think differently, study differently, and work differently.  Sometimes that is difficult for us “traditional” learners to understand.

 In Larry Rosen’s book “Rewired – Understanding the iGeneration and the Way They Learn” (2010), he states that today’s students carry mobile learning devices with them 24 hours a day, seven days a week.  This “always wired” generation relies on a hand held device for the Internet, communicating, and writing as  well as their reliance on speed and multitasking.

Today’s iGeners are able to study and socialize at the same time.  In fact, when the iGener is at home, that is exactly how they are doing it.  Students have a difficult time reading in a classroom when it is quiet and that is the only task they are expected to do.

Think about it.  When is the last time you saw your child sit and do only ONE thing at a time? Their brains of iGeners are wired differently. While this sounds contradictory to the fact that females are multitaskers and males are more single focused, what we have to remember is that iGeners have grown up multitasking and have practice in doing so.  In fact, because of what children have access to, the mantra has become “Anytime, Anywhere, Any way”.

While some may argue that multitasking causes problems, it does help children learn to self regulate.  Self regulating, for our purposes, would occur when a student knows they are not learning a fact well and is able to make adjustments to change their learning conditions (Rosen). 

With twenty some days left of school, spring fever, and finals around the corner, I share this information with you so that you can understand why your child may need their phone on the table while studying or they may have their iPods connected to ear buds listening to the latest music—they are multitaskers.  And if having this connection within their reach is what it takes to keep them motivated, then so be it. 

As digital immigrants, we know how to do things without being connected 24/7.  It is how we were raised.  But the iGeners do not.  And that is important to recognize.  So while we may not be able to relate, we should be able to respect that not everyone learns the same.  The digital immigrants' conditions for learning are not the digital natives' conditions for learning.