Homo Zappien: Are Children And Adults Really Multitask?

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Social Network Technology
There has been an explosion in the use of social media across many contexts, e.g. marketing, advertising, recreation, banking, recruitment and education). The continuous growth and expansion of the World Wide Web, the move internationally by many countries toward knowledge economies, the need for globalization and the advancement of new technologies are all factors that have led to the need to reconsider the current pedagogies and engagement mechanisms adopted for teaching and learning in higher education. Because students in the digital age are heavily exposed to various emerging technologies and the vast amount of information which they can access from anywhere at any time, the role of HEIs now might be to focus …show more content…

In other words, today’s learners are multitasking Homo Zappiens (Veen, 2006). Consequently, the assumption is made that these children are also able to do all of this effectively, efficiently, and without a loss to the present task. But is this so? Is the youth of today a Homo Zappien, and can children, adolescents and emerging adults really multitask?

Wim Veen proposed the term Homo Zappiens, referring to the new generation of learners who, according to him, unlike their predecessors, learn in a considerably different way. According to (Veen, 2006), children belonging to this generation develop – on their own and without instruction – the meta-cognitive skills necessary for enquiry-based learning, discovery-based learning, networked learning, experiential learning, collaborative learning, active learning, self-organization and self-regulation, problem-solving, and making their own implicit (i.e., tacit) and explicit knowledge specific to others. In addition, (Beastall, 2008) stated that the current generation of children and young adults have an advanced relationship with technology that is formed at birth. (Prenksy, 2001) noted their familiarity with and reliance on Information and Communication Technology (ICT), describing them as living lives immersed in technology, ‘‘surrounded by and using computers, videogames, digital music players, video cams,