On Privacy

There's a lot of talk about the need for privacy, especially online privacy regarding personal information. I would agree that users, regardless of their age, need to be aware of the kind of information about themselves that they are spreading online and who might have access to it. It's not unheard of for companies to collect information as a form of market testing or consumer research without informing visitors to their websites.

Discussions regarding young people and privacy however, also tend to talk about the amount of self-disclosure that young people do on social networks. It's particularly common for older people to be shocked at the photos being shown, or to bring up rumours of applicants being turned down for jobs based on things that are mentioned or shown on their Facebook/Myspace page. This is the kind of notion of privacy that I find interesting because it seems to argue that the idea of "privacy" is a static one - that what constitutes a private moment for baby boomers would be the same as for the so-called net generation or the even more so-called "Greatest Generation" (that pre-dated the boomers). All one as to do is read newspapers from different periods and look at the kinds of activities that are mentioned for prominent citizens and what can see that definitions of privacy have changed over time.

Notions of scandalous behaviour have also changed between generations and so I think that a lot of these pictures on social networks of ill-advised behaviours might not be shocking one day, perhaps once all the baby boomers have retired.

Protein Synthesis vs. Interpretive Dance

In all honesty I've been looking for this video since my wife saw it on 16mm film back in university. The title says it all.

On Multi-Tasking

Recently I've been reading iBrain: Surviving the Technological Alteration of the Modern Mind, by Gary Smal MD, and Gigi Vorgan. It looks at the how thought patterns and brain development are affected by new technologies. I was intrigued by the idea that reading something from a book might involve a different cognitive process than reading the same thing online.

The most recent chapter dealt with multi-tasking and recycled some of the familiar studies arguing that multi-tasking is not necessarily more efficient that proceeding through tasks in a linear fashion. From there, it is suggested that students who "multi-task" are doing themselves a disservice and as teachers we might want to encourage them to return to a single task methodology. Without doubting that in some cases, multi-tasking might be less efficient, iBrain made me wonder about the experimental design of some of these studies and their fitness for comparison with the ways that students actually multi-task. The one study that Small briefly explains had participants attempt to solve math puzzles while being also being asked to identify shapes. The result of this switching back and forth between tasks required more time.

It made me wonder however, how many students actually attempt to solve their math homework and their art homework at the same time (or say work on science and English simultaneously)? My own (completely anecdotal) observations of students "multi-tasking" involve them working on homework from one particular curricular area, while listening to music, watching TV, chatting to friends, etc. Listening to music or watching TV are rather passive activities, and students talking while working is nothing new. I don't feel that the extent of the disturbances for these activities would be as great as having to switch cognitive domains.

I would like to see more studies that focus on this kind of "parallel-tasking".