I’ve been reading The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains by Nicholas Carr.  I have found it fascinating when considered in conjunction with what Dr. Georgia Bozeday told us on Aug. 22nd about executive functioning.  Below I have quoted a few bits from the book to spark a continuing conversation in our buildings.

“Dozens of studies by psychologists, neurobiologists, educators, and Web designers point to the same conclusion: when we go online, we enter an environment that promotes cursory reading, hurried and distracted thinking, and superficial learning.  It’s possible to think deeply while surfing the Net, just as it is possible to think shallowly while reading a book, but that is not the type of thinking the technology encourages and rewards.” p115-116

After a passage wherein he discuses the differences in brain activity between reading online and reading book-like text, … “the extensive activity in the brains of surfers also points to why deep reading and other acts of sustained concentration become so difficult online.  The need to evaluate links and make related navigational choices, while also processing a multiplicity of fleeting sensory stimuli, requires constant mental coordination and decision making, distracting the brain from the work of interpreting text or other information. Whenever we, as readers come upon a link, we have to pause, for at least a split second, to allow our prefrontal cortex to evaluate whether or not we should click on it.  The redirection of our mental resources, from reading words to making judgements, may be imperceptible to us – our brains are quick – but it’s been shown to impede comprehension and retention, particularly when it’s repeated frequently.  … We revert to being “mere decoders of information”.  Our ability to make the rich mental connections that form when we read deeply and without distraction remains largely disengaged.” p121-12

As educators, should this knowledge impact our use of the Internet with students?