Technology is changing the way that
students learn.
Cite Evidence: quote or paraphrase, and
cite
Students’ constant use of digital
technology is shortening their
attention spans and making it harder
for them to focus (Richtel 1).
Introduce second piece of evidence:
Texting and instant messaging also
have a huge impact on students and
their school work.
Cite Evidence: quote or paraphrase, and
cite
John Hopkins School of Education
explains that “texting language” is
becoming a problem on papers and
other assignments (Fredericks 1).
Introduce third piece of evidence:
This technology also affects the
attention to detail that teens pay to
their writing.
Cite Evidence: quote or paraphrase, and
cite
Students
In Michaela Cullington’s article “Does Texting Affect Writing?” she addresses a superstition that the older generation of today believes to be a possible issue. This issue is the potential for texting via cell phones to negatively affect young peoples’ abilities to write correct, formal papers. In her writing, she logically dismissed these accusations by providing proof against this believe while presenting her defense in a persuasive manner.
Cullington moves onto introducing her experiment to test the ongoing debate and to get some more answers as to what texting really does to writing. Not only does she question students and teachers but she also takes the time to analyze several different students’ pieces to see how many errors occur throughout them. Cullington made sure to interview several different types of students to “allow for a wide array of thoughts and opinions on the issue” (366) so she could guarantee that there would be no kind of bias. Cullington asked teachers and students questions that were very alike but made sure to appeal to the type of audience they were and also trusted her “knowledge of them to help [her] interpret their responses” (366) as well as spot texting errors in the students’ papers. Cullington viewed “twenty samples of students’ writings” (367) to verify that she had a wide spread set of examples to gather information from.
Texting is harming the ability for this current generation of children to write in a formal manner. “Digitalk” is what Kristen Hawley Turner of Fordham University calls, text-speak.For example, many teens will text “g2g” in replace of the actual words “got to go”.In my opinion, texting is ruining students’ abilities to write a formal essay,letter,etc.
People claim that new developments have caused kids to be so dependent on their devices, that they can't think for themselves. This claim can also be turned around by saying that technology has given kids more opportunities and chances to learn, and in particular, more opportunities to write (Source 7, Clive Thompson). An example of this is a study done at Stanford University, where it was discovered that Stanford students did a stunning 38 percent of their writing outside of the classroom (Source 7, Clive Thompson). With the developments of E-mail, texting, and social media such as Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, younger people are constantly writing in their every day lives. In the past, people would, for the most part, stop writing once the finishes their education. Now however, people are more comfortable, and more used to, writing. And while the argument that technology has decreased level of the vocabulary and vernacular of young people is true in some cases, the increase in writing shown by young people has led to a greater ability to convey information to other people, and a greater comfort in talking to people they don't know (Source 7, Clive Thompson). As Andrea Lunsford says, "I think we're in the midst of a literacy revolution the likes of which we haven't seen since Greek Civilization" (Source 7, Clive
In Plugging In, Tuning Out, the author Don Campbell starts out his writing by talking about how his students use to tell him that they read The New York Times or The Economist in an attempt to impress him, but now his students are telling him that they read CNN.com and ESPN.com. He then continues on by talking about how technology is making the younger generation move away from the cultural experience that comes with traditional education. They are instead too focus on their technology and social media. After that Campbell moves on to talk about a study that showed how young adults are starting to incorporate their style of text messaging into their school writings. They understand that what they’re doing isn’t the best way of writing and acknowledge the fact that they need to be more formal in their homework assignments in order to be more successful.
Nicholas Carr in the essay “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” states “I can feel it, too. Over the past few years I’ve had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory. My mind isn’t going--- so far as I can tell--- but it’s changing. I’m not thinking the way I used to think.” This quote shows us how people are being affected by spending too much time using new technologies such as texting. Texting really does impact the way people think. While students are in school, they tend to write some of their paper in text form. This is because they are so used to using their phones and using the short texting forms that they forget how to actually write. I had this happen to me before. For example, in one of my English classes I had to write a quick one page essay on a book we were assigned to read. I started to write and once I finished I felt like it was pretty good. So, when I went back to proof read it, I realized that half of my paper was in short text form. I could not believe that I had done that. After I corrected all of my mistakes I turned in my paper. I was so glad that I looked over my essay before turning it in. Also, students would rather be on their phones than learning in school. While I am sitting in class, I always see people looking at their phones and not paying attention. Texting in class could cause you to fail and you would have to take the class over
In the section titled The Dumbest Generation, “Digital Nation” lays out a haunting narrative describing technology’s negative impact on students today. This section draws from an interview with Mark Bauerlein, a professor and author of book titled “The Dumbest Generation.” Bauerlein claims that reading, writing and math skills of students have all already began to deteriorate. It seems that constant interruption and attempts to multitask are at the heart of this deterioration. I received my first smart phone just before the beginning of this semester, from my own experience I can only agree with the assertion that technology puts a damper on the educational experience. The issue does not come with the technology itself, rather, the desire for constant connection distracts from the learning experience. As the first generation of persons who grew up with technology become parents, I hope they can teach their children the skill of moderation and the importance of education – skills often not taught to kids today by their parents born before the technology boom. These ideas will solve the deterioration of reading, writing, and math that Bauerlein speaks
This idea that the physical action of such seemingly meaningless tasks makes me want to leave my phone aside for the few hours I spend at school, learning and enriching my mind. These articles have clarified for me that the negative outcomes of technology in learning prevent my mind from absorbing knowledge. My academic work, whether it be in high school or college, will constantly deteriote if I let technology overpower my ability to think and learn. It is not even the fact that the use of technology will probably lower my grades, but the possibility of not growing or learning makes me realize that the consequences of technology use in the classrom are some that I will avoid and prevent by allowing myself to use my senses and knowledge to gain new ideas and experiences. Such implicaitons are ones that I wish to not face and will do so by simply setting my phone aside to learn, and by letting go of the temptation that technology can be, in such a modern, tech-savy
Text has become one of the most common ways teenagers communicate with others. This led to many people believing that students ability to write is declining because of texting. Cullington starts by noting argument of the negative impact of texting. Such as the one about students using abbreviations. In others words, some believe using abbreviations in
The author, Gardner, mentions about how technology can assist the writers “From my observation, student writers in 2005 display the same problems as their cohorts in 1990 displayed in dealing with ‘big’ issues like the development of ideas, the uses of evidence or the improvement of writing methods, right down to sentence-level concerns such as run-on sentences, fragments or problematic word usage” (par. 3). Utilizing the technology can give an assistance to become a better writer by allowing the person to choose brilliant
If students do not use technology in high school, they don’t learn the proper way to handle technology. When students go to college, they will miss important things like notes and lectures because they are too busy trying to pull
Technology is quickly becoming a huge part of day to day life for nearly everyone. If you walk around most places, you will see a large percent of people either on their cell phones, on their computers, or using some other electronic device. While some of it is being used for business and other important things, most of the time, it is more for entertainment. It is because of this that people claim that technology is changing the way people think today. In his article “Is Google making us stupid”, Nicholas Carr argues that people have become dependent upon the internet for information rather than having to work to figure it out. In the article “Does texting effect writing”, Michaela Cullington argues that people’s texting is effecting the way people write because people don’t show emotion when texting, so that is translating back into their writing. Both arguments are effective, both appeal to emotion, but the more effective argument is Carr’s because it is a more sound argument based on logic and credibility.
Technology nowadays exists everywhere. It is in cars, in classrooms, and at home. Because of the increase in technology, interactions have slowly changed. The way people talk to each other is completely different when they are sending shortened text messages such as BRB, g2g, and ttyl. Technology also distracts drivers on roads because of the notifications that are constantly popping up on their phone screens. However, technology isn’t all bad. Technology has affected writing in a more positive way as it makes its users feel more relaxed, encourages writing for pleasure, and helps improve
Also, students today can talk with their teachers from home, and learn all the information from the Internet and finish a research assignment that used to take days because of books, in a matter of hours. But, students of the newer generations seem to have many problems with writing complete sentences or spelling words because of the frequent usage of text messages and the many hundreds of acronyms used to shorten texts. But besides memory problems, technology usage can cause serious diseases as well.
Furthermore, as communication and writing skills diminish our school performance begins to be affected. The entertainment of mobile devices distracts nearly every student in the classroom whether it is texting, or playing games, or surfing the net. Mobile devices also play a big role in communication by making it possible for students to easily communicate with each other when they should not be. The power to communicate with virtually anyone is a major distraction. Some teens are so attached to their technological devices they sleep with phones on and wake up to answer text messages they get at night. When kids have cell phones in their classrooms they are extremely distracted from what is actually being taught. They are looking down and playing their games or going on social networking sites instead of listening to their teachers. With the constant distraction of technology and teens short attention spans reading and writing skills have suffered significantly and vocabularies are shrinking. This relates to their education and their ability to do well in school. Another problem is that technology provides students with the ability to explore numerous search engines for any problem they come across and copy them word for word. It seems that students don’t spend time thinking; they are simply repeating information instead of learning concepts and ideas. When students do this, they do not actually learn the