Blog 10

My web/hyper text assignment will be on Hyper Attention in the pre-schoolers K-3 grade level(multitasking/ Deep attention). Unlike Celia who is researching Generation M. I choose preschoolers because that is the area of teaching I will be going into. I want to investigate the pros and cons of hyper attention/ deep attention in that age group.

I learned in child psychology that by the time we reach the age of 6 all the brain cells we will ever have for our entire life are formed. And all the characteristic we have at 6, is the same characteristic we have now,as adults. I also know if you want to teach a child a new language you should do it before 5 years old, because it is much easier to learn during the first 5 years. So much growth in the brain goes on during birth to 6 years old. We may loose some brain cells throughout our lives by the over use of drug or with any type of brain surgery. But we will never produce any new brain cells. Did you ever see the "No Drugs" commerical where there is an egg in a pot cooking on the stove and the commentator says "this is your brains on drugs". Well that is true. Once we loose those brain cells, we can never create new ones.

During an Oprah show, a little girl who was deprived of any social interactions or stimulus of any kind for an expented period of time. So because of the lack of stimuli she lost brain cells and they will never be replaced.

I want to see the effects (if any) on our preschoolers with hyper attention/ multitasking/deep attention during those formative years. Also Alison gave me an article on "You say multitasking like it's a good thing" by Charles J. Abate. This article came from the NEATODAY magazine, which is a teaching magazine. Charles Abate is a professor of electrical and computer engineering techonolgy at Onondaga Community College, in Syracuse, New York, where he has taught for the past 25 years. I will be using this article in my research, as well as other articles, links and anything interesting that I can find. Thanks Alison.


Some questions I will try to answer:

Is hyper attention/multitasking/deep attention a plus or minus for children k-3?

How does this effect their learning abilities in school or home?

Is their anything parents or schools can do to help or hinder hyper attention/ multitasking/
deep attention?

Is this a good or bad stimuli for this age group?

What amount of stimuli is good for preschoolers?

Do preschoolers model their parents technological behavior?

At what age do parents introduce computers to a child?


This topic is really interesting to me being I am both mother and soon to be educator, and I want to see how this effects or children specially preschoolers.