In the article, "Have Technology and Multitasking Rewired How Students Learn?" Daniel Willingham, he states that he hears two suggested ways technology has changed the way students think. Some have suggested that without the multimedia that technology provides, students will become bored. Some have suggested that technology has allowed students the ability to multitask.
Willingham states that there is some truth in the first suggestion but none in the second. The focus of this post is to discuss the first suggestion and ignore the second since no one can truly multitask.
Is technology needed in order for a student to be engaged? And how is technology best used to engage students?
Willingham explained in "Why Don’t Students Like School?" that a good way to engage students is to pose solvable mental problems. These problems are not necessarily puzzles but rather can be activities that present students with mental challenges such as when listening to a story and attempting to anticipate what will happen next.
"In order for technology (or any instructional tool) to increase student engagement in academic content, it has to aid in presenting problems as both challenging and solvable."
"…there is nothing inherently interesting about the technology (at least once the newness wears off ); students are not interested in all software or all hyperlinks. It’s the content and what the user might do with it that makes it interesting or not."
As always, the bottom line is that the design of the instruction is more important than the technology.