After reading this article, I tend to believe that technology does not shorten students' attention spans. It does, however, instill in students a sense of instant gratification and can make them impatient when waiting for results. For instance, if you were to examine a group of students listening to lectures fifty years ago and examine students listening to lectures today, the results would be remarkably similar in my opinion. Our attention spans have not changed because of technology, but our demand for quick, concise information has.
David Marcovitz states: "We teach them facts and reward them with digital candy and then wonder why they can't sit still to learn without that candy." This statement assumes that technology is being used as a reward rather than a tool for learning. Digital technology, when used properly, can be an excellent aid for helping students grasp concepts or browse multiple sources of data in a short period of time.
While I agree with Marcovitz that we could not expect students to sit through three hours of debate like people did during the Lincoln Douglass debates, I doubt that anyone who sat through those debates were hanging on every word brimming with excitement. That does not mean, however, that we should ignore great lessons from history. We should help our students develop skills that will allow them to browse through pages of seemingly boring material so that they can decipher the most important information. This is why I disagree with John Son's assertion that we should move to an entirely digital format with bookless libraries. As a historian, I cannot imagine a more powerful way to convey message and emotion than having students touch and read a diary or letter written by someone moments before they died.
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