“Moore reports that teenagers use different parts of their brains and think differently than adults when at the computer. He suggests that their brains are physiologically different as a result of the stimuli provided by electronic media. Do children raised with the computer think differently from the rest of us? ‘They develop hypertext minds. They leap around. It’s as though their cognitive structures were parallel, not sequential’ (Prensky, 2001).”

Pedagogy and teaching methodologies throughout time have constantly been reviewed and revised in order to find ways of teaching that are more apt to improve student learning and achievement. However, with the technological advances that society has made in such a short period of time, teachers are presented with a very new challenge: how to effectively teach students with an ever-decreasing attention span. Research shows that there are many pros and cons to incorporating technology in the classroom. On one hand, it presents students with the opportunity to use a more familiar and interesting platform to learn content they may have otherwise deemed as uninteresting or too challenging. On the other hand, it opens the door to other distractions, such as non-subject related games, in an environment that is geared towards assisting them in developing the skills necessary to stay on task and think critically. On another note, while discussing lesson planning strategies with my Cooperating Teacher, I learned that he plans his lessons based on the assumption that a person’s attention span in minutes is the equivalent to the person’s age divided by two. For example, in a class of Freshmen ages 13-14, he makes a point to switch activities and medias approximately every 7 minutes. Though I find this to be an ingenious way to maintain students’ attention, there is also a part of me that feels it only caters to their short-attention span as opposed to helping them work out and build that muscle. As a future educator, I am interested in seeing how a balance between catering to students’ short attention-spans as a result of them practically being born with a smartphone or tablet in hand and exploring new ways of teaching that will not only engage them, but will also help them to train their brains to be more focused. I wonder how that could be achieved and how it could affect and support brain growth during adolescence.

Philip, R. (2007). The brain during adolescence: Making sense of technology, media, social status, and education. In Engaging ‘tweens and teens: A brain-compatible approach to reaching middle and high school students (pp. 74). California: Corwin Press.