Digital media means procrastination...

Interesting reading in the articles posted. One of the reasons I chose to use an online lived-learning journal was that I could update it wherever and whenever I needed to. This, the thinking went, would mean that I could record observations within minutes of the action taking place rather than when I next had time to sit down with a paper journal.

It would seem, however, that this freedom from sitting down with a physical book and writing up my experiences has, as at least one of these studies has suggested, tended to lead to less entries and, possibly more importantly, less timely entries than I would have expected from my previous expreience with "old technology".

Part of this must be due to pressures of work and life; because the journal can be updated instantaneously there is a definite tendancy to "do it when I finish this". What actually happens is that the updates tend to be put off until I realise that if I don't catch up with two weeks of information it will be lost.

This would, perhaps be the experience of the students in the studies. Because the material is always available it can always be studied later. The issue then becomes one not of studying, but of time management. Rigid lecture times force students to attend and to make space in their day for the lecture. The ability to study any where at any time can lead to continual procrastination.

Perhaps what is happening is the evolution of just-in-time learning. That's certainly how I work in my job. If I need to know how a video conference recording device works I go and read the manual; usually I only read it just before I need to do a task or even (often) as I do it. As information and knowledge become evermore available and compartmentalised I suppose it is natural that a similar model would perhaps evolve in students - the "Net Generation" are growing up with information at their fingertips and entirely new attitudes to learning. Good or bad? I suppose that depends. Perhaps we have to look at our education system moving from information transfer to information processing models.

Higher Education is moving in that direction. Sadly our Government seem to want to focus lifelong learning on information transfer and skills rather then information processing and processes. Schools, by and large, are only just seeing the alternatives and why change is necessary.

Another issue with long posts has been that the technology, whilst flexible, isn't as reliable as it should be. By their nature browser based applications are always prone to lost connections. In the case of this journal a lost connection could mean 30 minutes typing. This has lead to a combined strategy of either writing up posts in a word processor first and then cutting and pasting or saving the post after every paragraph (as now). The former method reduces the flexibility of the system, I have to be using a machine with WP software, and is more time consuming, the latter disrupts the train of thought and intrudes on the creative process.

Also, wonderfully flexible as computers are, they still aren't as instantaneous as a pencil and paper. They can be intrusive, noisey, slow to turn on and even handheld devices lack the discretion of a paperpad and biro. I've never been asked what I'm doing when taking notes via paper & pen, but audio recording and even taking notes on a handheld often prevokes comment and has occasionally been seen as an invasion of privacy. I sometimes think that Big Brother would be able to carry on unnoticed as long as he monitored everyone in person and recorded everything on paper!