summary of conclusion

Cathy Davidson starts off by showing an experiement done for students to close their eyes for 5 minutes in silence then open them and see how their thought process was. The students were amazed that they could not put together everything they had just thought of because their brain was going everywhere and was distracted even without distraction. 80 percent of our neural energy is taken up not by external distractions at all but by the mind talking to itself. This was done at Washington University where dozens of volunteers were hooked up to neuroimaging machines and found out that the brain lights up the screen in all kinds of patterns whether a person is actually doing a task or seemingly at rest.

Cathy Davidson argument is that technology is not a distraction to our brain's in this day in age. Our brain is always being distracted even when we are in complete silence we are still thinking about multiple things at once and cannot focus on one sole thing for a long period of time. Our brains our distracted even without distraction. To be human is to be distractable even without being distracted by our digital age. People think that if we can minimize interruption, block out disruption, narrow our focus, and control our task it will be an efficient way to be productive. The truth is the most disruptive and multitasking workplace is a good thing compared to all the neurons in our brain going crazy all at once. I don't really agree with what she is saying here because I know I have to work in a quiet environment to be concentrated and focused on what I am doing almost all the time or else I will zone out and forget my thought process. Some people like to listen to music while they type or do homework and I just could never do that because the words of the song would throw me off of everything I was thinking about typing or doing.

Ch.8

Cathy Davidson traveled to Italy with her husband where she experienced the worst injury of her life. She went to go swim and jump off rocks, but instead she went down the ladder and slipped and fell. When she fell she mangled her arm in the ladder and dislocated many bones in her arm. She went to a hospital in Italy where they set things back into place then she was sent to Duke University's medical staff. She had to have surgery and do physical therapy with other Duke athlete who inspired her to work harder and never give up. She met a taxi driver who drove her to therapy every day who she became close with and inspired him to do some of his own therapy to help some of his pain in his body. Her goal was to get back to being almost 100% or the way she used to be before her injury.

If you set the bar to high it is frustrating and counterproductive, if you set the bar to low it is dull and underachieving. I believe Cathy's argument throughout this whole chapter is that attitude is everything. She was going through a hard time in recovering from a very serious injury and she had to stay positive throughout the whole process to succeed. She had to give herself something to get motivated by each day so she can get herself better and back to being her old self. She used her taxi driver and the inspiration of other athletes going through rehab with her to motivate her each day to get better. She also showed the separation of age and times between people. She showed that if we believe our age controls us it does, but if we that we control it we have a fighting chance. I 100% agree with everything in this chapter because of the way she said she was motivated and inspired by others. As an athlete when you see others working hard you want to work just as hard as them if not harder. When your going through an injury you always need a motivational factor and something to look forward to, to get healthy.

Ch.7

In this chapter Cathy Davidson gives her definitions and shows 6 examples of what she thinks a good worker is. Her first example is how people work and live in a virtual world. In real life they look the way they do, but the next day they can change their bodies and appearances to look how they want them to. One day you can be three hundred pounds and the next day they can be an Olympic sprinter. These people are living  second life and enjoy what they do in their 3D worlds. Her 4th example is about a former Duke basketball player named Shane Battier who currently plays for the Miami Heat. He was a student before he was an athlete and was nicknamed "lego" because he made everyone around him better and put the pieces together to form a great team. He also was a leader in the classroom with a 3.96 GPA. If he wasn't drafted into the NBA he was going to become a scholar in Comparative Religion.

Cathy Davidson argument throughout this chapter I believe is that people do not need recognition for what they are doing, they just want to love and enjoy what they are doing every day. In her 6th example in this chapter she talks about a group of contractors and local construction workers in Greensboro, North Carolina who came together to build the largest Green Hotels so it was better for the environment. Also how famous players like Shane Battier do not want much recognition for their accomplishments. He was influenced by a book by John Hope called "From Slavery to Freedom" and he wanted to attend the speech that was being giving by John Hope at the Franklin center. Shane called John Hope and asked if he could attend the speech, but did not want his own local celebrity to detract from John Hope's celebration. I thought this was very mature and humble for Shane to do. Also the workers in Greensboro, North Carolina who volunteered to build one of the largest environmental friendly buildings in the world was very noble and they had to be very dedicated and love what they do on a daily basis. They put in hours of their own time with nothing in return just to better the world.

Ch.6

This chapter is telling us how this generation works just as hard if not harder as the two generations before that even if we do not believe it. It is saying that the internet is not affecting us in a negative, but is actually affecting us in a very positive way and is making us much smarter than we realize. The author is saying how the digital work place of today is so much different in the past 10 to 20 years and what a remarkable change it has made. She is letting us know throughout this chapter that we need to accept the change in our lives for us to continue to be successful and move on in the work place. The internet offers so many opportunities and possibilities for us to be successful that there is no way for us not to accept it in our lives. We need to continue to use it and be successful in the workplace, and records and scores show that we are being more productive than ever in the workplace today. The internet is not a distraction to us, but instead it actually helps us to pay attention more and is a good multi tasking tool that we will use in the future.


The author is arguing that people of today do not believe that we are not working as hard as our parents did or as hard as our grandparents did. The facts show though that we are working just as hard as they did and as a matter of fact we are working harder than they did in today's world. She is also arguing that the internet is not making us stupid and we can't just assume that, she believes that the internet is making us brilliant. She is saying the change in the past decade due to the internet is remarkable in the workplace today. She is mainly arguing that we need to adjust to this new era of technology and accept all the privileges it brings to us and take advantage of them. She wants us to change our work place to adjust to the present time and to make achievements and succeed in a global economy that everyone knows. I do agree with what she is saying about not living in the past and that we have to change with time to succeed. We can't just continue to do what we know, sometimes we have to adjust with the times even if we don't want to. This is the only way we will succeed in life is if we accept the new technology in the workplace and use it to our advantage because it offers so many possibilities for us to excel in.

Ch.5

The author begins the chapter by talking about a charter school in North Carolina and a specific teacher named Duncan Germaine. She explains how his whole classroom is set up and how he begins his class and how he teaches his students new methods of learning. He wants his students to take what they learn in other classes and apply it to real world experiences. The kids have to come up with their own ways to work towards solutions and test their solutions in real world and experimental situations. Mr. Germaine let's the kids choose if they want to work in groups or alone on projects strictly to see the difference between independent versus group thinking, how some people take on a challenge and how other people let you down. All of these students at the charter school have trouble learning in their own ways and that is why this school is so different from other public education, it allows the students to learn at their own pace and decide their own grade.

The authors argument in this chapter is the difference of learning in a classroom with standardized testing versus learning in a classroom with group work and doing things that you can apply to real life situations. She is arguing that even if a student does have a hard time sitting in a classroom where all you do is take notes and do testing, that they can still be productive in our world today. She shows that by giving all these examples in the beginning of the chapter at the charter school where students our learning how to build a bridge out of popsicle sticks using a group or individually figuring it out. She is arguing the point that students are still learning very valuable lessons for the future without using standardized testing as a teaching method. These kids are learning group work and how to divide up money between each other if they win the prize by using percentages, interest rate, and collateral. These kids are learning valuable things that our essential to our everyday lives. They don't need to memorize or sit down and spit out information on a piece of paper that they will forget the next day to be successful in life, they need to learn essential tools that will allow them to succeed in the business world as they get older. Communication with other and working as a group is a huge tool you need to have in this world today to be successful.

Ch.4

Professor Davidson tried out her new way of grading which was called crowdsourcing. Most of her students loved it while a group of them criticized her about it. surprisingly the group that criticized her was her A+ students. Her new grading method was one that went against all the old ways of grading from the twentieth century. She was letting her students choose what they wanted to learn, and pick out topics to discuss, and choose what they wanted to do for homework and projects. Professor Davidson let her students control her class and also control the grade the were going to receive at the end of the semester, this raised many eyebrows to long time professors and old school teachers. She had very strong remarks from other professors and was not being criticized in a good way at all.

Her argument in this chapter is about her crowdsource grading system. She was being criticized by students and professionals about her new way of teaching. some were positive, but many were negative. She was arguing that giving a test and assigning a grade to that test does not have real world value and will not help students in the future. She is saying that we don't get an A or an F in life, testing us is not essential to us succeeding in the future. She is arguing that people believe we are not able or willing to learn unless we are forced to. She is saying that our generation needs to change our class structure because the old ways of learning were used and designed for a different era that valued different things. I do and i don't agree with what professor Davidson proposed in this chapter. My reasons why I do agree is because I do believe we need to change our ways of testing and learning. I believe that standardized testing does not help students in anyway prepare for the future or retain knowledge from the subject matter. What I do not agree with is letting the class have control and tell the teacher what they want to do. I like letting the teacher know about what I want to learn though.

Ch. 3

Apple had come to Duke University to see if they could sell one of their items and make them an Apple Digital Campus. Duke needed to know if they could use any of their items for educational use. They ended up buying the IPod in 2003 and handed them out to every freshman that year to see if they could be put to learning use. In the world of technology crowdsourcing means inviting a group to collaborate on a solution to a problem. Cathy Davis and her staff at Duke told the upper classmen that if they convinced their professors to use IPods in their courses they would receive free ones also. Students were using IPods to do interviews and created an audio documentary that they aired on a regional radio station, they also used them in the nursing program as stethoscopes to hear patients heart beats, and they were mainly used in the music program where students uploaded compositions to their IPods.

Cathy Davidsons argument in this chapter is basically the use of new technology in class rooms throughout Duke University. She wanted to propose a new idea to students and the professors to see if using technology in the class room would help students to learn and stay organized and get more work done. She was trying to show the old school generation of learning how the new school generation of learning works which is the Technology Age. She knew a lot of the older professors would be confused and most likely would not like the new proposal, but was trying to make them understand by having the students give their professors reasons to use this new tool called an IPod in their class rooms. I think her argument was definitely legit because of the response by the students throughout the chapter. They came together and made many useful ways to use the IPod in the class room and proved to Duke University that this was a good investment for their school. It also has continued to change over the years with how much technology we use in our classrooms today whether its online classes, laptops, IPads, IPods, or even multi media phones. Cathy Davidson helped change the way students learned on campus by introducing new technology to them and putting it to great use.

Ch. 2

In this chapter the author is talking about the neurons and the connections inside the human brain. Children and infants have more neurons in their brains than adults do. The more a human repeats a certain behavior, the more rapid and constant that behavior comes to them. These habits and patterns that we learn are called reflexive behaviors. Program cell death means that unused cells must die, they are useless and soon don't exist. If these cells did not die we would be overwhelmed and paranoid about events that were new and random to us. This chapter explains the disability of autism and how children with it have a harder time comprehending things then people who have full neurological development. Also talks about how in the animal kingdom their young have to learn on their own and they are not taught how to do certain things they just learn from their mistakes constantly.

The argument throughout this chapter is basically about how the brain works and learning about ourselves. The author shows us that we as infants and children start off with more neurons than when we age as adult. In the past people believed that as we got older we gain neurons, but the truth is as we get older we lose about 40 percent of the neurons we used to have. If we did have this many neurons there would be to many things going through are heads and humans would be paranoid and freaking out everyday because they would be overwhelmed and over thinking everything. I do agree with her argument because everything she is talking about is facts about our brains and how the connections of them work in our daily lives. Also how kids with autism have a harding time concentrating and learning certain things because their brains our different from ours. She shows how a lot of people have different neural conditions and learn in a different way like people with Williams Syndrome. People with Williams Syndrome have lower IQ scores then people without and struggle with learning from what studies show.

Ch.1

This chapter is showing us how we are distracted by the positives and rarely see the negatives. In the beginning of the chapter Davis shows how drug distributers distract our attention from the scary side effects like liver disease, suicidal thoughts, and fatality. The distributers goal is to distract the consumer in a brief amount of time and capture their attention so they act fast. They want the consumer to only see how the product can help and not how the side effects can hurt you. The chapter deals a lot with how people deal with depression. It talks a lot about the medicine Cymbalta and it's side effects for depression. Throughout this whole chapter the author shows how people of all ages get distracted in various ways.

The author in this first chapter is trying to make the argument that we as consumers get tricked into believing advertisements that can be harmful to us if we do not pay close attention to the detail. The producer of these products are trying to catch our attention for 6.5 seconds and have us concentrate only on the way the medication can help you and not the harmful side effects it can cause towards your body. I think her argument is legit because many people do buy these products even though the warnings are stated at the end of the commercial, because the people only here what they choose to hear which is how the product can help them and don't pay attention to the way it can harm and possibly kill them. Her argument is well put because it has been proven many times to happen before so she is showing what the producers do to distract us from realizing the bad things and only focus on the good so they make their money. The author shows how infants are distracted and cry when the are yelled at, but then stop crying because people around them aren't and someone is patting them on the back and soothing them. I agree also with this because that is how kids learn by noticing how other people are acting around them and if they aren't freaking out then there is no need for them to be freaking out.