I’m Banning Laptops From My Classroom

[Igel]

7. Computers don't much multitask.

A processor does one thing. Fast.

But it can move everything to memory and do a second thing while waiting for things like having a drive read. When it returns to the first task it has lost nothing. Perfect retrieval of memory, it picks up where it left off.

We cannot do that. Memory is imperfect. We have to pause to catch up, get back to where we left off. We lose focus.

We screw up. We don't notice because to notice means instead of trying to do two things we do three--monitoring is an additional task.

Simple, often repeated and automatic things we can multitask. As long as nothing departs from script.