Multitasking vs Task Switching

In the March volume of ASCD's Educational Leadership journal there are a number of very interesting articles related to utilizing technology in the 21st century classroom. One article that particularly caught my attention was "Mastering Multitasking" by Urs Gasser and John Palfrey.

In their article they point out the difference between multitasking and task switching - something that I had given little thought to before. When we discuss digital natives and multitasking we often assume that the native's brain is wired differently, so differently that it enables them to write a paper, maintain an instant chat with friends, and watch a movie online all at the same time. What Gasser and Palfrey point out is that true multitasking is actually doing two things simultaneously - like reading a book and listening to music, or running and listening to an audio book.

What our digital natives do most of the time is task switching - work on a paper then switch to their chat then check a web site then go back to their paper and so on. This leads to the paper that the student is working taking a lot longer to get completed than if the student was just concentrating on that one task.

Do our digital native students know about this? According to Gasser and Palfrey they do not. One of our challenges as 21st teachers is to engage students "...in intentional conversations about its [multitasking] promises and limits..." (Gasser and Palfrey, 2008). By helping students to discover when multitasking might be helpful and when it might be distracting and dangerous, we can help them to become more effective and powerful users of the available technologies.

Source: Gasser, U. & Palfrey, J. (2009) "Mastering Multitasking". Educational Leadership Vol. 66, No. 6, pp. 14-19.

ANZAC Commemoration

April 25 is a very special day for Australians and New Zealanders, a day when we pause to commemorate the landing of the ANZAC (Australian and New Zealand Army Corps) troops at Gallipoli in 1915. On Friday afternoon the Australian members of our staff organized a Bar-b-que to commemorate this event. It was well attended by the GSIS Faculty and even though the rain stopped the cricket and rugby matches, it certainly didn't stop that ANZAC quality of mateship from permeating through the Faculty. The snags and burgers were cooked to perfection and a great afternoon was had by all.

A Big Thank You!

Yesterday we took time out of our busy schedules to honor and thank our Korean staff members. The ceremony was coordinated by the High School Student Council Association who provided music, afternoon tea, and gifts for all of our invaluable Korean staff. This was a great opportunity for us to recognize just how important the work that they do is to the success of our school. From me personally I would like to express my sincerest gratitude to the Secretaries, the General Affairs department, the Business Office, the Maintenance crew, the Bus Drivers, the Security team, and the Cleaning crew - I highly value and respect you and the work that you do for us all here at GSIS. Kam'sa'hap'nida!

Welcome Mr Einstein!

Tomorrow we will host Mr Marc Spiegal, the creator and presenter of the Einstein Alive science show. It promises to be a great day with Marc presenting three separate assemblies: one for Elementary students at 8:45am, one for Middle School students at 10:45am, and one for High School students at 1:00pm. You can read more about the Einstein Alive show at the following link:
http://www.marcspiegel.com/einstein/

Wireless Networks

We have had some problems over the last couple of days with students using the GSIS wireless network instead of their respective division network - like the MS wireless network. The GSIS network is much less restrictive than the division networks and unfortunately some students have been using this to download files from the internet. We are aware of this and our tech office has resolved the problem by changing the network password to one that is much more secure - in fact I don't even know what the new password is. Please know that we acted very quickly on this issue and students can no longer access the GSIS wireless network.

A Prophetic Post?

Last night I posted about technology being neutral and how people are responsible for the choices they make when using technology. I am not sure of the prophetic value of that particular post, but today I had to deal with some students for the very issue that I was writing about last night. This was a great opportunity for me to sit down with students and talk about school expectations regarding technology and to explain that by choosing not to meet the expectations that they were being non-compliant. During our conversations we were able to move beyond the laptop and to begin discussing choices and consequences. Once the students were able to identify how their choices could lead to some quite severe consequences, they were able to self reflect and they then laid out a plan detailing how they could make better choices in the future. This certainly is not the quick fix solution - but it is definitely a step in the right direction.

Can Technology Be Bad?

Being a 1:1 laptop Middle School is a catalyst for many very interesting conversations. A lot of these conversations center around dealing with adolescents and their insatiable appetite for all things technological. Then of course the 'digital native - digital immigrant' divide comes up as well. A recurring theme through a large number of these techno centric conversations is the idea that technology is bad. Every time this occurs I hear Mr Darren Price (our Director of Technology) in my ear saying, "Technology is neutral - it is neither good nor bad." This always reminds me that the technology is only as powerful, positively or negatively, as the person using it. Face book is not bad - people have certainly used it to do some bad things, but the program itself is neutral. Our responsibility as parents and educators of young adolescents is to help them develop good decision making skills, skills that will enable them to become ethical, responsible, and powerful users of the technology available to them. Along the way we should also stop and ask our tech savvy middle schoolers what they are doing - we may be amazed at what they can teach us!

Student Feedback

Yesterday (Friday) I was invited to attend the Grade 7 Oral Communications class to hear persuasive speeches that the students were presenting. The students had been working on 3 things they would change at GSIS and this was their opportunity to persuade the Principal to make these changes. The ideas ranged from standardizing the student laptops, to allowing Korean to be spoken during lunch time, to providing more opportunities for our sheltered students to work in academic settings with mainstream students. This feedback from the students was very well thought out and very practical. I was particularly impressed with the way the students presented their ideas and supporting reasons. The students spoke very clearly and audibly, and they paced their delivery very well; demonstrating real improvement in their verbal English ablilty. This was a wonderfully positive experience and was another example of the outstanding teaching and learning that is occuring at GSIS.

Sharing Ideas

On Wednesday April 15 I attended the Middle School Principals' meeting at Seoul Foreign School. This was a great opportunity to get together with other international school MS Principals and share initiatives from the different schools and discuss what is working and what areas people are looking for new ideas in. This may seem like a bit of a strange meeting considering that we are all fee paying schools competing for the same market; however this is a like minded group of Prinicpals who believe that what we discuss and share will result in better educational outcomes for all of our students. This most recent meeting involved Principals from Seoul Foreign School, Korea International School, Seoul International School, Yongsan International School of Seoul, Indianhead International School, and Gyeonggi Suwon International School. Our next meeting will be in October and will be hosted at GSIS.

Too Young To Think?

It's interesting how as adults we often assume that deep thought is a neurological function that is reserved for those who have reached maturity, despite constant examples that prove otherwise. Recently my wife was debating whether she should take a short trip to Australia to be a part of her parents' 40th wedding anniversary celebrations. When she was discussing this with our 8 year old son she was explaining that she was having trouble making her decision because she really wanted to go, but she didn't want to be away from her family. Our son sat deep in thought for a few moments before responding, "Life's just not like ice-cream is it." When we asked him to further explain this he described how if you want vanilla ice-cream and you also want chocolate ice-cream but you can't decide, you can just put them together and have them both. He went on to tell us that in life you just can't do that! I wonder if Aristotle could have put it any better?

MYP Visit

We were very fortunate to have Curtis Beaverford, the Asia Pacific Regional Director for the MYP come to visit and work with us for the past 2 days. Our MYP Coordinator, Mr Joe Fambro, arranged for Curtis to consult with us about our progress toward implementing MYP and to discuss our plans for authorization. Curtis was very positive about the progress that we have made so far and it was very affirming to hear that the hard work of the teachers and Mr Fambro has really propelled us toward our goal of being an authorized MYP school. We still have a lot of work to do in modifying descriptors and developing the AOIs, but we are well and truly on our way. Congratulations to Mr Fambro and the MS faculty on the positive feedback, and a big thank you to Curtis for taking time out of his busy schedule to come and work with us.

Welcome to Mr Cooper's Blog

For some time now during conversations with our Tech Coordinator Mr Peterson, he has been asking me why don't I set up a blog? At first this sounded like a great idea, however after more thought I started to wonder what I would put on the blog and if it would be interest worthy enough to read. As I reflected on this I finally came to the conclusion that this would be a great way to share GSIS information and happenings in real time, rather than waiting for the opportunity in our monthly newsletter. So, here it is......Mr Cooper's blog. I hope you find it informative and interesting.