says David Greenfield, a psychologist and assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of Connecticut:When we hear a ding or little ditty alerting us to a new text, email or Facebook post, cells in our brains likely release dopamine — one of the chemical transmitters in the brain’s reward circuitry. That dopamine makes us feel pleasure
“It’s a spectrum disorder,” says Dr. Anna Lembke, a psychiatrist at Stanford University, who studies addiction. “There are mild, moderate and extreme forms.” And for many people, there’s no problem at all.
Signs you might be experiencing problematic use, Lembke says, include these:
Interacting with the device keeps you up late or otherwise interferes with your sleep.
It reduces the time you have to be with friends or family.
It interferes with your ability to finish work or homework.
It causes you to be rude, even subconsciously. “For instance,” Lembke asks, “are you in the middle of having a conversation with someone and just dropping down and scrolling through your phone?” That’s a bad sign.
It’s squelching your creativity. “I think that’s really what people don’t realize with their smartphone usage,” Lembke says. “It can really deprive you of a kind of seamless flow of creative thought that generates from your own brain.”
Consider a digital detox one day a week
Tiffany Shlain, a San Francisco Bay Area filmmaker, and her family power down all their devices every Friday evening, for a 24-hour period.
“It’s something we look forward to each week,” Shlain says. She and her husband, Ken Goldberg, a professor in the field of robotics at the University of California, Berkeley, are very tech savvy.
A recent study of high school students, published in the journal Emotion, found that too much time spent on digital devices is linked to lower self-esteem and a decrease in well-being.
Common Sense Media recently partnered with the Center for Humane Technology, which supports the development of ethical technological tools, to lay out a fierce call for regulation and awareness about the health issues surrounding tech addiction.
To support educators making such decisions, Common Sense Media is taking their “Truth about Tech” campaign to schools through an upgraded version of their current Digital Citizenship curriculum. The new updates will include more information on subjects such as:
Creating a healthy media balance and digital wellness;
Concerns about the rise of hate speech in schools, that go beyond talking about cyberbullying; and
Fake news, media literacy and curating your own content
What Does ‘Tech Addiction’ Mean?
In a recent NPR report, writer Anya Kamenetz, notes that clinicians are debating whether technology overuse is best categorized as a bad habit, a symptom of other mental struggles (such as depression or anxiety) or as an addiction.
Dr. Jenny Radesky, a developmental-behavioral pediatrician at the American Academy of Pediatrics, notes that though she’s seen solid evidence linking heavy media usage to problems with sleep and obesity, she hesitated to call the usage “addiction.”
Dr. Robert Lustig, an endocrinologist who studies hormones at the University of Southern California disagreed, noting that parents have to see the overuse of technology as an addiction.
Eyal, L. (2012). Digital Assessment Literacy — the Core Role of the Teacher in a Digital Environment. Journal Of Educational Technology & Society, 15(2), 37-49.
Common to all is a view of the level of literacy as a measure of the quality of human capital of a society or a particular area. Literacy develops in interaction with the environment (Vygotsky, 1987).
digital assessment literacy refers to the role of the teacher as an assessor in a technology-rich environment.
Learning Management Systems (LMS) benefits and limitations
Measurement allows quantitative description of a particular characterization of an individual, expressed in numbers.
the combination of assessment and measurement provides a thorough and accurate picture, based upon which practical conclusions can be drawn (Wagner, 1997). A test is a systematic process in which an aspect of student behavior is quantitatively evaluated (Suen & Parkes, 2002).
For several decades this system of assessment has been criticized for a variety of reasons, including the separation between the teaching-learning process and the evaluation process, the relatively low level of thinking required, and the quantitative reporting of results, which does not contribute to students’ progress. In the last decade, the central argument against the tests system is that their predictability is limited to the field and context in which the students are tested, and that they do not predict student problem solving ability, teamwork, good work habits and honesty.
teachers mistakenly believe that repeating lessons will improve students’ achievements.
To evaluate how well the goals were achieved, objective measurement methods are employed (Black, et al., 2004).
Eshet- Alkalai (2004) offered a detailed conceptual framework for the term ‘digital literacy’ that includes: photo-visual thinking; reproduction thinking; branching thinking; information thinking; and socio-emotional thinking.
Eshet-Alkalai, Y. (2004). Digital literacy: A conceptual framework for survival skills in the digital era. Journal of Educational Multimedia and Hypermedia, 13(1), 93–106.
Eshet-Alkalai, Y., & Chajut, E. (2009). Changes Over Time in Digital Literacy. Cyberpsychology & Behavior, 12(6), 713-715. doi:10.1089/cpb.2008.0264
two major patterns of change over time: (a) closing the gap between younger and older participants in the tasks that emphasize profi- ciency and technical control and (b) widening the gap between younger and older participants in tasks that emphasize creativity and critical thinking. Based on the comparison with the matched control groups, we suggest that experience with technology, and not age, accounts for the observed lifelong changes in digital literacy skills
Eshet-Alkalai, Y., & Soffer, O. (2012). Guest Editorial – Navigating in the Digital Era: Digital Literacy: Socio-Cultural and Educational Aspects. Journal Of Educational Technology & Society, 15(2), 1.
a wide range of technological, cognitive and social competences—collectively termed “DigitalLiteracy.” Users thus must become “digitally literate” in order to cope effectively with the complex sociological, cognitive and pedagogical challenges these technologies pose. These skills include, for example, the ability to operate computers and navigate the net effectively, to cope with large volumes of information, to evaluate the reliability of information, and to critically assess what seem to be natural (and not ideologically biased) technological tools. In a different way from the spirit of modern print, learners construct and consume knowledge in non-linear environments. They need to learn, collaborate and solve problems effectively in virtual (non face-to-face) learning environments, and to communicate effectively in technology-mediated social participation environments.
It is important to note: digital literacy, then, is not limited simply to computer and Internet operation and orientation. It also relates to a variety of epistemological and ethical issues arise due to the unique characteristics of digital technologies and that are often overlapped with trends related to the post-modern and post-structural era. These include questions regarding the authority of knowledge, intellectual property and ownership, copyright, authenticity and plagiarism. Furthermore, issues such as self-representation, virtual group dynamics, and on-line addiction also arise.
Children who use smartphones, tablets, and video games for more than seven hours a day are more likely to experience premature thinning of the cortex, the outermost layer of the brain that processes thought and action, a 2018 study found. https://t.co/OJe6ZTBVkx
But others say banning laptops can be counterproductive, arguing these devices can create opportunity for students to discover more information during class or collaborate. And that certain tools and technologies are necessary for learners who struggle in a traditional lecture format.
Flanigan, who studies self-regulation, or the processes students use to achieve their learning goals, began researching digital distraction after confronting it in the classroom as a graduate instructor.
Digital distraction tempts all of us, almost everywhere. That’s the premise of Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World by Cal Newport, an associate professor of computer science at Georgetown University.
The professor is upset. The professor has taken action, by banning laptops.
Bruff, whose next book, Intentional Tech: Principles to Guide the Use of Educational Technology in College Teaching, is set to be published this fall, is among the experts who think that’s a mistake. Why? Well, for one thing, he said, students are “going to have to graduate and get jobs and use laptops without being on Facebook all day.” The classroom should help prepare them for that.
When Volk teaches a course with 50 or 60 students, he said, “the idea is to keep them moving.”Shifting the focal point away from the professor can help, too. “If they are in a small group with their colleagues,” Volk said, “very rarely will I see them on their laptops doing things they shouldn’t be.”
Professors may not see themselves as performers, but if they can’t get students’ attention, nothing else they do matters. “Learning doesn’t happen without attention,” said Lang, who is writing a book about digital distraction, Teaching Distracted Minds.
One aspect of distraction Lang plans to cover in his book is its history. It’s possible, he said, to regard our smartphones as either too similar or dissimilar from the distractions of the past. And it’s important, he said, to remember how new this technology really is, and how much we still don’t know about it.
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Study: Use of digital devices in class affects students’ long-term retention of information
A new study conducted by researchers at Rutgers University reveals that students who are distracted by texts, games, or videos while taking lecture notes on digital devices are far more likely to have their long-term memory affected and to perform more poorly on exams, even if short-term memory is not impacted, EdSurge reports.
Exam performance was not only poorer for students using the devices, but also for other students in classes that permitted the devices because of the distraction factor, the study found.
After conducting the study, Arnold Glass, the lead researcher, changed his own policy and no longer allows his students to take notes on digital devices.
A nationally representative Gallup poll conducted in March showed that 42% of K-12 teachers feel that the use of digital devices in the classroom are “mostly helpful” for students, while only 28% feel they are “mostly harmful.” Yet 69% of those same teachers feel the devices have a harmful impact on student mental health and 55% feel they negatively affect student physical health.
According to a 2016 study of college students, student waste about 20% of their class time for “non-class” purposes — texting, emailing, or using social media more than 11 times in a typical day. In K-12, increased dependence on digital devices often interferes with homework completion as well.
Though the new study focused on long-term retention, past studies have also shown that indicate a negative correlation between use of digital devices during class and exam scores. A 2015 study by the London School of Economics revealed that pupils in schools that banned cell phones performed better on exams and that the differences were most notable for low-performing students.
Using laptops in class harms academic performance, study warns. Researchers say students who use computers score half a grade lower than those who write notes
findings, published in the journal Economics of Education Review in a paper, based on an analysis of the grades of about 5,600 students at a private US liberal arts college, found that using a laptop appeared to harm the grades of male and low-performing students most significantly.
While the authors were unable to definitively say why laptop use caused a “significant negative effect in grades”, the authors believe that classroom “cyber-slacking” plays a major role in lower achievement, with wi-fi-enabled computers providing numerous distractions for students.
High schoolers assigned a laptop or a Chromebook were more likely to take notes in class, do internet research, create documents to share, collaborate with their peers on projects, check their grades and get reminders about tests or homework due dates.
Blended Learning – the idea of incorporating technology into the every day experience of education – can save time, raise engagement, and increase student retention.
Lets face it, our students are addicted to their phones. Like…drugs addicted. It is not just a bad habit, it is hard wired in their brains(literally) to have the constant stimulation of their phones.
If you are interested in the research, there is a lot out there to read about how it happens and how bad it is.
a Scientific American article published about a recent study of nomophobia – on adults (yes, many of us are addicted too).
Malone, K. (2007). The bubble‐wrap generation: children growing up in walled gardens. Environmental Education Research, 13(4), 513–527. http://doi.org/10.1080/13504620701581612http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13504620701581612
some of the changes in childhood environmental behaviours I explore children and parent relationships, in particular, the phenomena of ‘bubble‐wrapping’ children to appease the anxieties of some middle class parents.
Ivanova, A., & Ivanova, G. (2009). Net-generation Learning Style: A Challenge for Higher Education. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Computer Systems and Technologies and Workshop for PhD Students in Computing (pp. 72:1–72:6). New York, NY, USA: ACM. http://doi.org/10.1145/1731740.1731818http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1731818
Lynch, K., & Hogan, J. (2012). How Irish Political Parties are Using Social Networking Sites to Reach Generation Z: an Insight into a New Online Social Network in a Small Democracy. Irish Communication Review, 13. Retrieved from http://arrow.dit.ie/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1124&context=buschmarart
Parker, K., Czech, D., Burdette, T., Stewart, J., Biber, D., Easton, L., … McDaniel, T. (2012). The Preferred Coaching Styles of Generation Z Athletes: A Qualitative Study. Journal of Coaching Education, 5(2), 5–97.
Greydanus, D. E., & Greydanus, M. M. (2012). Internet use, misuse, and addiction in adolescents: current issues and challenges. International Journal of Adolescent Medicine and Health, 24(4), 283–289. http://doi.org/10.1515/ijamh.2012.041
Group work assignment – what is digital literacy and why is it important to people of all ages:
Students work in groups and outline a definition of digital literacy and a list of 5 reasons about the importance – 5 min
Study and discuss the following infographic (5 min) https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims/2014/10/16/early-learners-tech-use/
For and against children spending time with technology. Gaming, social media, and computer use in general as addiction. “Disconnect/Unplugged” (Sherry Turkle) versus contemplative computing and similar meditative and contemplative practices: https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims/2013/11/05/getting-unplugged/
ALLISON AUBREY