I spent a few years as a recruiter for the Army, and I’ve spent the rest of my time in the Army training the young men and women of the “millennial” generation. Despite the whining to the contrary, there is nothing special about how this generation receives and processes information. And they are not immune to the distractions which have plagued students since the first classroom. Computers simply represent a different delivery system for those distractions. Anonymous Professor, I doubt your students are any more or less engaged in your lectures than they were prior to the proliferation of laptops and wireless. They’re simply more noticable because you can now hear the clicking as they type, and see the glow of their screens, where before they just tuned you out, whispered with their neighbor, or simply napped.
The claim that “I can multi-task because I can IM, email, and check friends on Facebook while I do something else” has nothing to do with actually managing multiple tasks in the real world. All it means is you know how to hit ALT-TAB.
