books unread: some thoughts about multitasking, reading and our students

My unread books remain so because they only exist as atoms, I need them in bits.  

The list below represents the books I'd read now if I could, if only they were available as audio on audible.com.

Book reading has moved from unitasking to multitasking.   I "consume" books while doing other things: running on the treadmill, driving, sitting at a basketball game, doing the dishes, walking the dog etc.  With too many things to get done in the my book reading would be minimal without the ability to read while doing other things.  Perhaps I'd trade magazines for books, or watching Netflix for books, but I can usually find a solid hour per day while doing something else that I can listen to a book - and rarely a solid hour with enough attention or energy to read a book.

The realization that my books are now part of a multitasked day leads me to wonder if book books (atoms) are will disappear from our student's days as well.....as our students can only multitask.  If we don't provide a multitasked option then I'm afraid reading will remain largely undone.  Are we providing audio versions of the curriculum we are assigning?   Or are we wishing that our students will read books like we used to - by doing one thing at a time?  

At some point we will need to make the medium accommodate our learners, rather then continually argue and complain that our learners are not accommodating our cherished beliefs and methods.  Educators, authors, and publishers need to understand that if a book is not multitaskable (is this a word?) then it may no longer be relevant.

Social Sciences and Education
The Race between Education and Technology by Claudia Goldin
Grown Up Digital: How the Net Generation is Changing Your World by Don Tapscott
Born Digital: Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives by John Palfrey
The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America Is Tearing Us Apart by Bill Bishop
Who's Your City?: How the Creative Economy Is Making Where to Live the Most Important Decision of Your Life by Richard Florida
X Saves the World: How Generation X Got the Shaft but Can Still Keep Everything from Sucking
Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy by Lawrence Lessig
Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide by Henry Jenkins
The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google by Nicholas Carr
Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns by Clayton Christensen Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why  by Laurence Gonzales
Everyday Survival: Why Smart People Do Stupid Things by Laurence Gonzales
Glut: Mastering Information Through the Ages by Alex Wright
Opening Up Education: The Collective Advancement of Education through Open Technology, Open Content, and Open Knowledge by John Seely Brown
State by State: A Panoramic Portrait of America by Sean Wilsey
India: The Rise of an Asian Giant by Dietmar Rothermund    
Blown to Bits: Your Life, Liberty, and Happiness After the Digital Explosion by Hal Abelson
Call of the Mall: The Geography of Shopping by the Author of Why We Buy by Paco Underhill
Bottlemania: How Water Went on Sale and Why We Bought It by Elizabeth Royte
American Nerd: The Story of My People by Benjamin Nugent
Why Popcorn Costs So Much at the Movies: And Other Pricing Puzzles by Richard B. McKenzie
The Gridlock Economy: How Too Much Ownership Wrecks Markets, Stops Innovation, and Costs Lives by Michael Heller
Parenting, Inc. by Pamela Paul
Not Keeping Up With Our Parents: The Decline of the Professional Middle Class by Nan Mooney
High Wire: The Precarious Financial Lives of American Families by Peter Gosselin
The Big Squeeze: Tough Times for the American Worker by Steven Greenhouse
The Missing Class: Portraits of the Near Poor in America by Katherine S. Newman
Cop in the Hood: My Year Policing Baltimore's Eastern District by Peter Moskos
The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can Be Done About It by Paul Collier
The Wisdom of Whores: Bureaucrats, Brothels, and the Business of AIDS by Elizabeth Pisani
The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century by George Friedman
The Change Function: Why Some Technologies Take Off and Others Crash and Burn by Pip Coburn
Future Hype: The Myths of Technology Change by Bob Seidensticker
The Cult of Statistical Significance: How the Standard Error Costs Us Jobs, Justice, and Lives by Deirdre Nansen McCloskey
McMafia: A Journey Through the Global Criminal Underworld by Misha Glenny
First Stop in the New World: Mexico City, the Capital of the 21st Century by David Lida
The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less by Barry Schwartz
Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations by Clay Shirky
What's Next: The Experts' Guide: Predictions from 50 of America's Most Compelling People by Jane Buckingham
The Natural History of the Rich: A Field Guide by Richard Conniff
More Sex Is Safer Sex: The Unconventional Wisdom of Economics by Steven E. Landsburg
Poor People by William T. Vollmann
The Pirate's Dilemma: How Youth Culture Is Reinventing Capitalism by Matt Mason
Immigrants: Your Country Needs Them by Philippe Legrain
In Spite of the Gods: The Strange Rise of Modern India by Edward Luce
The Grid: A Journey Through the Heart of Our Electrified World by Phillip F. Schewe
Punching In: The Unauthorized Adventures of a Front-Line Employee by Alex Frankel
Mine's Bigger: Tom Perkins and the Making of the Greatest Sailing Machine Ever Built by David A. Kaplan
One Perfect Day: The Selling of the American Wedding by Rebecca Mead    
The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger by Marc Levinson
Last Harvest: How a Cornfield Became New Daleville by Witold Rybczynski
The Soulful Science: What Economists Really Do and Why It Matters by Diane Coyle
My Secret Life on the McJob: Lessons from Behind the Counter Guaranteed to Supersize Any Management Style by Jerry Newman
The Disposable American: Layoffs and Their Consequences by Louis Uchitelle
How Soccer Explains the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization by Franklin Foer
Sick: The Untold Story of America's Health Care Crisis---and the People Who Pay the Price by Jonathan Cohn
Oil on the Brain: Adventures from the Pump to the Pipeline by Lisa Margonelli    
Off the Books: The Underground Economy of the Urban Poor by Sudhir Alladi Venkatesh
Planet of Slums by Mike Davis     
The Meadowlands: Wilderness Adventures on the Edge of a City by Robert Sullivan
Rats: Observations on the History and Habitat of the City's Most Unwanted Inhabitants by Robert Sullivan
The Evolution of Useful Things: How Everyday Artifacts-From Forks and Pins to Paper Clips and Zippers-Came to be as They are by Henry Petroski
Birth: The Surprising History of How We Are Born by Tina Cassidy    
The Sky's the Limit : Passion and Property in Manhattan by Steven Gaines
740 Park: The Story of the World's Richest Apartment Building by Michael Gross

History:
The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World by Niall Ferguson
A People's History of Poverty in America by Stephen Pimpare
Drink: A Cultural History of Alcohol by Iain Gately
I Don't: A Contrarian History of Marriage by Susan Squire
The Victorian Internet: The Remarkable Story of the Telegraph and the Nineteenth Century's On-line Pioneers by Tom Standage
Tea: Addiction, Exploitation, and Empire by Roy Moxham
The Devil's Cup: A History of the World According to Coffee by Stewart Lee Allen
Dangerous Tastes: The Story of Spices by Andrew Dalby
Vanilla : The Cultural History of the World's Favorite Flavor and Fragrance by Patricia Rain
Tobacco: A Cultural History of How an Exotic Plant Seduced Civilization by Iain Gately
Uncommon Grounds: The History of Coffee and How It Transformed Our World by Mark Pendergrast
The Hamburger: A History by Josh Ozersky     
Newton: Ackroyd's Brief Lives by Peter Ackroyd
A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World (Princeton Economic History of the Western World by Gregory Clark
The Shock of the Old: Technology and Global History since 1900 by David Edgerton
A History of the World in Six Glasses by Tom Standage
Marriage, a History: From Obedience to Intimacy, or How Love Conquered Marriage by Stephanie Coontz
And a Bottle of Rum: A History of the New World in Ten Cocktails by Wayne Curtis
Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World by Dan Koeppel
Beans: A History by Ken Albala     
The Toothpick: Technology and Culture by Henry Petroski
Jeans: A Cultural History of an American Icon by James Sullivan
Something in the Air: Radio, Rock, and the Revolution That Shaped a Generation by Marc Fisher
Knowledge and the Wealth of Nations: A Story of Economic Discovery by David Warsh
The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good by William Easterly
The Pencil: A History of Design and Circumstance by Henry Petroski
The Story of Corn by Betty Fussell
One Good Turn: A Natural History of the Screwdriver and the Screw by Witold Rybczynski
War Made New: Technology, Warfare, and the Course of History: 1500 to Today by Max Boot
The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap by Stephanie Coontz
A Consumers' Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America by Lizabeth Cohen
The Lever of Riches: Technological Creativity and Economic Progress by Joel Mokyr
Understanding the Process of Economic Change (Princeton Economic History of the Western World) by Douglass C. NorthGutenberg: How One Man Remade the World with Words by John Man  The Potato: How the Humble Spud Rescued the Western World by Larry Zuckerman
Coal: A Human History by Barbara Freese
Reinventing the Bazaar: A Natural History of Markets by John McMillan    

Science and Technology:
Your Brain: The Missing Manual by Matthew MacDonald
Blind Spots: Why Smart People Do Dumb Things by Madeleine L. Van Hecke  
The Science of Fear: Why We Fear the Things We Shouldn't--and Put Ourselves in Greater Danger by Daniel Gardner
The Carbon Age: How Life's Core Element Has Become Civilization's Greatest Threat by Eric Roston
Oxygen: The Molecule that Made the World (Popular Science) by Nick Lane
Everything Bad is Good for You by Steven Johnson
The Accidental Mind: How Brain Evolution Has Given Us Love, Memory, Dreams, and God by David J. Linden
One in Three: A Son's Journey into the History and Science of Cancer by Adam Wishart

Comments

[Brian Reid]

Is multitasking really efficient?

NPR story:
"Humans remember and learn differently when their attention is divided. Russel Poldrack, a UCLA psychology professor, speaks with Lynn Neary about what occurs in the brain during multitasking."

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=7700581

[Joshua Kim]

Hi Brian...great link - I enjoyed the interview (and is a good example of exactly the resources that can be put into a course....and that we'd want our students to bring to any debate).

Right on point.

The argument I'd make is three-fold (in support of my argument that we should be figuring out how to deliver curriculum in text, audio, and mobile formats):

1. We need to distinguish between multitasking where a student interacts with curriculum while doing other things that interrupt or compete for the same attention (such as flipping from book to IM to Web to video) and where the two tasks are distinct and can complement each other. My canonical example is listening to a book while running on the treadmill - something I think we can do both and absorb.

2. Expanding our objectives for courses and education may help us move away from a culture of discrete learning to one of life long learning. My goal in teaching is to instill a curiosity for the subject matter, so my students become life-long readers and participants in the big questions and issues in the discipline that I'm teaching. I'm less concerned that they can "remember" what was covered in the short run (as that knowledge will change and grow), and more concerned they learn the language, issues and questions of the discipline.

3. Finally....I'd argue that an unread curriculum - or a crammed curriculum to get through a test - is worse then a curriculum consumed even without the rapt attention of a book, a silent library, and a big block of time. I'm beginning to believe that in enforcing that paradigm, that ideal, that we simply leave too many learners behind...too many books unread. I'm willing to take the trade-off, work to supply the curriculum in as many format and mediums as possible, and let the student figure out what works best for her.

Great interview Brian...I really appreciate the dialogue.