1/28

2050 – Living Room – Start Reading

2051 – Interrupted by son asking game related questions

2100 – Stop to put kids to bed

2115 – Start

2120 – Comment to a houseguest about the nature of reading, that is, whether a lover or friend with benefits is best

2140 – Interrupted by wandering child who should be in bed

2155 – Brain hurts, must stop reading

1/29

2035 – Living Room – Start Reading

2050 – Interrupted by son with an inquiry about building a Lego Mindstorms robot

2055 – Inform the children of their impending bedtime

2105 – Pause to pose a question via twitter

2106 – Stop to put kids to bed

2115 – Start

2130 – Reading complete

I am what you might term a first-generation Digital Native.  I didn’t get to grow up with the Internet at my fingertips, but I have been using computers since I was five years old.  I’m not completely sure that I agree with Prensky‘s arguments about Digital Immigrants versus Digital Natives.  I freely admit that Digital Natives have a much easier time multi-tasking and seem to have a firmer grasp on technology as a whole while Digital Immigrants are single-task oriented in almost all situations.  But, it seems, at least to me, that this has a lot to do with the environment they are brought up in.  Can Digital Natives pay attention to a single item for an extended period of time?  From my perspective, yes.  Growing up, my attention was constantly jumping from place to place.  I could have easily been diagnosed as an ADHD child.  It took something special for me to sit still for a long period of time and concentrate.  For me, that could be a really interesting book, a model, or, eventually, computer programming.  Each one of those can easily be considered by some to be rather dull and uninteresting.

Now, with more experience under my belt, I’m able to identify times when I need to sit and concentrate on a specific task, regardless of whether I believe it to be interesting or boring.  It seems this is something that comes with time.  Having watched a child grow up as a Digital Native into their late teens, I can see these changes taking place.  Where they were, at one time, diagnosed as ADHD, they have progressed to the point where they can sit and concentrate for longer periods of time on a singular task.  And I fully expect to see similar results in my other children.