I was intrigued by the video "A Vision of Students Today," which happens to be this week's video of the week.  For obvious reasons the "statistics" amazed me.  Today's kids actually get 26+ hours of "stuff" done in a 24-hour day!  I was listening to the EdTechTalk chat the other night and found that I could not follow what everyone was saying because I was too busy reading the written chat.  But, the kids in this video would be listening to the presenters, reading the chat, IM-ing their friends, talking on the phone and watching TV all at the same time.  What is wrong with me?!?

Then I started thinking...as educators, how do we handle this?  Do we discourage this type of multi-tasking and teach our students how to focus on one thing?  They can't possibly be paying complete attention to ALL those tasks.  But, can we really change that?  And, do we want to? 

So, since today's students will clearly multi-task for the rest of their lives (bold statement, I know, but I can't see it any other way), the question I have is, how do we help them succeed when they our spreading their attention so thin?
EDIT 10/20/07 - Just read an interesting article that talks about TEACHING multitasking.  Seems to focus more on older students, but interesting nonetheless:

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