Sunday, September 23, 2012
Multitasking in the Modern World
This past weekend the PASSHE Collegiate Media Summit was held at Bloomsburg University. Unfortunately, I did not make it to the first day because I had to work. I was able to attend three sessions on Sunday, one was with speaker Sree Sreenivasan. Sreenivasan discussed the social media that is currently used the most including Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. He gave several tips on how to manage Facebook friends (setting friends in lists as 'family', 'close friends', or 'acquaintances') and privacy settings (making use of the subscribe button) that I will definitely take advantage of. While he was talking about twitter, he mentioned a previous speaker that he had listened to. He said the speaker called out his audience for using cell phones, not as a negative thing, but as a good one. Sreenivasan explained that this speaker encouraged his audience to 'participate' by tweeting what he was talking about while he was presenting. This really caught me off guard. Someone actually asked for their audience to be distracted with phone use?? Can people in an audience multitask so well that they are able to listen to a speaker, understand what they are saying, and tweet in reply all at the same time? It's difficult for me to text and walk at the same time. It's difficult for me to text and talk at the same time! Also, what happened to the common courtesy, the respect of putting our cell phones away and giving a speaker or professor our undivided attention? I decided to be 'old school' and put my 'distractions' into my purse during Sreenivasan's presentation. Afterwards, I checked twitter, and sure enough there were several @sree tweets from students in the audience that commented on parts in the beginning, middle, and end of his presentation.
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I'd agree with you that it would seem rude to be tweeting, texting, or facebooking during a speaker's presentation. However I also think it would be an interesting way to answer questions through out the presentation. For example "what did he just say" or "what was that quote,link,etc". The idea of multitasking is also interesting: I happen to think I'm a great multitasker however when I say this people generally point out studies saying that multitasking is impossible.
ReplyDeleteHaving the feed up behind him or something would have been interesting, too, as long as the audience was mature. I feel that it was interesting that a speaker encourage phone use during a talk. During lecture or mandatory speech for a school even this probably would not have been a good idea. However, if the audience is there voluntarily then they most likely want to hear the speaker... in which case tweeting would probably not become too bad of a distraction. The only problem I can see is the one you point out, Audra. I see many people who cannot multitask, especially when it comes to their phone (usually with their phone taking priority).
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