3 Activities On Attention, Concentration, and Multitasking
Or, why you can’t be on your phone or play computer games during this class!
When we give students access to a powerful tool – a kitchen knife, a band saw, or a car, for example – we accompany that access with safety training, coaching, and practice.
Many kids get no such coaching when they receive the most powerful tool of all: internet access.
The deleterious impact of social media use on teens is well known:
Social media use and online gaming is correlated with poor academic outcomes, including lower exam scores (source) and poorer college GPA (source).
Increased screen time results in less sleep and poorer sleep quality, harming both students’ health and their academic performance (source).
Time spent on social media has been strongly linked to anxiety, depression, suicidal tendencies, and other mental health problems in teens (source).
All of this prompted US News and World Report to declare in July 2021, “Social Media is a Public Health Crisis” (source).
As teachers, it’s not enough to tell kids “no cell phones in class”. We MUST go deeper to help our students understand and manage this powerful force, lest it deeply harm them. Of course, there is a lot of dangerous and negative content on the internet, and teaching students to be good media consumers is part of this task. Perhaps even more foundational, however, is helping students learn to manage the time they spend online and keeping electronic activities in healthy balance with other areas of life.
Many students believe they are good multi-taskers, and they use this as justification to always have phones out or another tab open during class. Teaching students the truth about multitasking is an important step in helping them manage their online behaviors.
The Truth About Multitasking
“Despite what our students think, multitasking is a myth. Teaching students the truth about multitasking is an important step in helping them manage their online behaviors.”
Research shows us that humans can only perform one cognitive task at a time. That is, we can only do one activity that requires active concentration. The American Psychological Association website, for example, lists a large body of research showing the detriments of multitasking on performance and efficiency (source). Despite what our students think, multitasking is a myth.
An example most adults can identify with is driving. In comfortable driving conditions we can also carry on a conversation in the car. That’s because through practice, driving has become an automatic process that doesn’t require intentional focus. However, if the driving conditions deteriorate – through an accident on the road or bad weather, for example – the driver will instinctively tell others in the car, “Be quiet!” That’s because the driving suddenly requires cognitive attention, and the driver doesn’t have mental room for the conversation anymore.
“Multitasking is functionally equivalent to distraction”
This human limitation to one cognitive task at a time manifests itself in many ways. If a student struggles with letter formation in handwriting, for example, they are likely to miss content as they attempt to take notes. I can’t talk on the phone and grade essays at the same time; both tasks require my full attention. Ultimately, there is no such thing as multitasking; the entire concept is a myth. When we say we are multitasking, what we’re actually doing is “task-switching”, quickly switching our attention between different activities. This is an inefficient and ineffective use of our mental capacity. In the words of researcher Jesper Aagaard, “multitasking is functionally equivalent to distraction” (click here for source).
Sharing this information with students is one step toward helping them develop healthy boundaries in their own social media use.
Activity 1: Name and Number
The Name and Number activity, which I modified from Dave Crenshaw’s famous illustration, is a great object lesson in on the drawbacks of multitasking.
This video demonstrates the original exercise. Give it a try!
For students, I modify the task slightly by asking them to write their full name on paper as quickly as possible. Then number each letter of their name. For example, I would write:
Lisa Elaine Bartels
1 234 5678910 11 12 13 14 15 16 17
As they perform this simple exercise, have students time themselves and record their time. Then try again, and again. Each time, try to go faster.
After three attempts, ask kids to try the activity one last time. But this time, instead of writing their full name and then numbering each letter, students should write the first letter of their name, and underneath it ‘1’. Then the second letter, 2, the third letter, 3, and so on. This simulates what happens to our brain during multitasking.
Crenshaw explains that during this exercise, most people experience 3 results:
Alternating between letters and numbers takes longer
The quality of the work (accuracy, handwriting, and neatness) suffers.
Stress level rises
The multitasking is much harder. As one student told me, “I couldn’t believe it - I kept forgetting how to spell my own name”. Discuss this experience with students, share some of the research on multitasking and cognition, and relate it back to cell phone use. The fact is, students cannot be effective learners and at the same time attend to social media or games. The human brain doesn’t work that way. Helping students to understand this forms the basis for disallowing off-task electronic time wasters during class.
Activity 2: The Monkey Business Illusion Video
The Monkey Business Illusion Video is a second activity to make this point. Before you continue reading, give it a try!
Once again, we see how focus and concentration are limited resources. In fact, students who do see the gorilla or the other changes in the video often fail in the primary task of counting the passes. Our brains are built to concentrate on one activity at a time. In this classroom, that activity needs to be learning French.
Activity 3: Misleading Directions
Randomly give students one of 3 handouts. Each handout contains a list of 10 unrelated words:
Truck
Pizza
Raccoon
Sing
Purple
Sock
Bicycle
Learn
Football
Sister
Although all 3 handouts have the same word list, each version has different instructions.
Version 1: Count the letters in each word and add up the total.
Version 2: Rank the words in order of your least to most favorite.
Version 3: Memorize the words.
At the end of 3 minutes, ask everyone to flip over the handout and list all the words they can remember.
The kids who had version 3 – memorize the words – are likely to do much better than the other students because their preparation was appropriate for the ultimate task. Students with handout 1 – count up the letters – will likely do the worst, because that task is furthest from the actual performance goal. In other words, the way we study is the way we perform. If we are distracted by outside tasks (counting letters, choosing our favorites…. responding to friends’ texts, completing game levels) then when it’s time to perform we have only vague memories of the content we were meant to be learning. When our focus is on what we’re actually supposed to do, our performance is much better.
Attribution: I learned this activity at a professional development workshop in Wake County Public Schools. The illustration was designed to encourage teachers to align instruction with assessments; I modified it to help students understand the importance of spending their time on useful tasks.
“Healthy online behaviors can be modeled, practiced, learned, and improved upon, and it’s up to each of us to lead the way in our classrooms!”
Click to read A Workable Classroom Cell Phone and Computer Use Policy.
Social Media is here to stay: our students will never experience life without it. As teachers, we are tasked with a challenge no previous generation has faced: helping kids learn to manage this powerful tool. There’s a lot of potential for good but - like with the kitchen knife, band saw, or car – unmanaged internet use can cause great damage. We must face this reality with determination and confidence, by integrating digital management into instruction. Healthy online behaviors can be modeled, practiced, learned, and improved upon, and it’s up to each of us to lead the way in our classrooms!
Read more about my approach to teaching online behavior in my blog post, “A Workable Classroom Cell Phone and Computer Use Policy”.
Do you have a great activity to teach balanced online behavior? Share in the chat!
