Digital Tools Controversy

Michaela Cullington’s essay “Texting and Writing” explores the possible effect of teen texting on formal writing in school. Cullington lists three different hypotheses scholars pose about the cor- relation between the two: those who criticize texting for its negative impact on writing, those who believe texting is actually a beneficial exercise in writing, and those who see no relationship at all. Cullington begins her analysis with the first theory, quoting concerned teachers, citing the shock- ing statistic that “only 25% of high school seniors are ‘proficient’ writers” (90), and adding testi- mony from two of her former teachers. Cullington then explores the second take on texting and writing by providing contrasting testimony from other teachers who believe that texting is a bless- ing to their students’ writing. Cullington retrieves support for these two opposing views from inter- views and previous studies. To explore the theory that texting is irrelevant to formal writing, how- ever, she performs her own research, gathering results from seven students, two teachers, and an analysis of students’ written work. Despite the testimonial evidence against and in support of tex- ting, Cullington’s own results show that texting has “no effect, positive or negative, on [students’] writing as a result of texting” (95).

It’s reviving it- and pushing our literacy in bold new directions.” I think what the author has to say here is very important and many people should understand this. I feel like technology is helping writing grow in a drastic new direction. Technology has taken over the world and I believe it may be for the better. Why? Well like it says in the reading our generation is constantly using technology. Everyday, everyone's using some type of technology and constantly on social media and when you are on social media what do you do? Well, you're writing or you are reading. For example, constantly, when I’m on Facebook, articles appear everywhere and they catch my attention. I start to read them and once I read one I most likely read another one that is linked to it. Reading is a huge advantagement when it comes to writing, because to be a good writer you need to read. Another example would be Twitter, Twitter you are also constantly writing tweets. When writing a tweet you want to write something that catches people’s attention and you want to be grammatically correct because if you don't you will look dumb and uneducated. So Twitter pushes you to work on your grammar skills and write

Not So Fast,” Andrea Lunsford argues that rather than leading to a new illiteracy, the digital technologies in the modern world help students to develop their ability of writing. Not only that students are daferrors than 25 years ago, actually with less spelling errors. In order to help students with the challenges, the teacher should offer solid instructions and encouragement rather than derision.

To many people, writing is either considered a task, or an activity. There are also different types of writing for people to enjoy. In Josh Keller’s “Studies Explore Wether the Internet Makes Students Better Writer”, Keller describes how the internet has made students far better writers. He also describes how many students have described their dislike for academic writing but prefer their own personal blogging and/or journaling. This essay describes why struggling students often fail to write effectively because they find academic writing hard because they are not able to put their own thoughts and experiences into their essay. The idea of this essay was to describe the problems with students writing and the possible solutions for the problem. Keller mentions that the solution, that is not being pursued, is to combine academic writing with personal writing. He describes how many students write far better in their own personal writing and that these student’s personal writing

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

Technology has completely taken over when it comes to writing and it’s not fair to strip this curriculum out of schools and it’s especially not fair for the parents of young children to have to teach their children at home how to write in the cursive script I think it should at least be offered as an extra curriculum class such as music, band, and sports. I think that cursive writing could really benefit anyone children especially but for some reason the school systems have become so dependent on computer technology that a lot of the testing in schools are even done on a computer I remember doing CSAP testing and you had to make sure you filled in the correct bubble just right. As the author writes cursive is a lost virtue and to get it back is more than likely not going to happen this really makes me wonder what other skills schools no longer teach children I mean I know as parents it’s our job to prepare our children for the future but if it comes down to the point to where were having to teach our children the necessities to get them through life at home then what exactly is the point of public schools if they aren’t preparing our children for the future. To me cursive is like math people use it every day and if children aren’t being taught how to write it they definitely aren’t going to be able to

A real audience forces most students to reconsider how they word their ideas. To avoid looking illiterate, most students will consult their teacher or a grammar and usage book to make sure they are adhering to good grammar guidelines. By writing online students feel motivated to do their best. For example, George Mayo, a Maryland middle school 8th grade teacher, found this to be the case. According to Morgan,“Mayo remarked that the level of motivation in his class soared when his students found out that pupils as far away as China were participating.” Therefore, social media can writing by motivating students to do their best.

Clive Thompson’s “On the New Literacy” discusses the argument that technology is causing our youth’s writing skills to decline. He starts by mentioning a study that shows writing has actually improved and is having a re-birthing of sorts. Andrea Lunsford, A writing professor at Stanford University, ran the study, collecting nearly 15,000 student writings ranging from class assignments to blog posts. She discovered Stanford students were writing outside of the classroom 38 percent of the time and due to the internet, these writings had a bigger audience, which in effect made the students writing better. He states that Stanford students were less enthused about in-class writing because the only audience would be their teacher

According to Jame Doubek, in the article “Attention, Students: Put Your Laptops Away”, writing notes by hand is much more effective than typing notes in class.He used an example of Mueller and Oppenheimer’s study that published in Psychological Science to demonstrate that writing notes by hand can be more potent than typing on the computer.First, Mueller and Oppenheimer suggest that with the development of technology, students are relying more on the laptop because laptops are small and and typing notes is much faster than writing by hand, so students love to type notes in class and always “try to transcribe all thing they heard”. However, the more words they copied verbatim, the worse

The article “The Writings on the Screen” by Tiffany O’Callaghan talks about how this generation reads more frequently, and the style of writing has changed immensely. Tiffany also talks about how taking notes by hand rather than a computer will help you understand the topics of the lecture, and also help you retain the information. She emphasizes on the fact that using a laptop for an educational purpose is problematic, and distracting, not only to yourself, but to others around you. This article also talks about how writing by hand forces your brain to process the information you heard.

The classroom is also deficient in outside sources for consultation when writing papers. Currently most of the technology use is through the students home computers and cannot be integrated into the classroom. The education Provided at Legacy is sufficient in the traditional areas, but the integration of technology is greatly lacking. The student’s have next to no ability to be exposed to and utilize any form of new technologies. This deficiency makes it hard for the student to be prepared for the technology driven

Writing and reading has always held importance to us as a culture. We use writing and reading every single day. In recent news the topic of teaching handwriting has been debated. Many people are strongly for it, with the usual argument that all of our constitutional papers are written using cursive. It also has been proven that writing longhand makes us exercise different parts of the brain. (Dubner) On the other side of that argument people say that in the real world we don’t use writing as much as we used to. Using a podcast about this topic I created a survey to gain information on how students writing styles compare to their GPA. The survey results, although small, give some great information to how writing affects us. Students who write

Technology is a helpful tool for teaching the writing process, and Marchisan and Alber (2001) concluded that writers can be taught to write using the writing process approach paired with tools of technology, direct instruction, and committed well-trained teachers. Graham, (2008), Graham & and Perin (2007a), and Rogers & and Graham, (2008), agreed that technology makes the process of writing easier and often provides very specific types of support. Word processing provides at least four advantages: (a) revisions are easily made, (b) publishing is professional-looking, (c) typing provides an easier means for children with fine motor skill challenges to produce text, and (d) word-processing programs have software programs, such as spell and stylistic checkers designed to reduce specific types of miscues. Other tools are speech synthesis (i.e., the writer’s spoken words are transcribed to electronic text) and word-prediction programs (i.e., the computer program reduces the key strokes by predicting the writer’s next word). This is helpful for students with difficulties with spelling and the mechanics of writing. In addition, outlining and semantic mapping software can aide with the planning process, and the use of computer networks and the Internet can help to promote communication and collaboration among writers.

I agree with that students now have to adapt and learn this new way of writing but not all schools are keeping up with it. Learning the new skills involved with online writing is going to help young people like myself succeed in communication online. I believe that this new era of digital writing is both beneficial yet may still have consequences with it. One of the main advantages of digital writing is that it is so easy to get your ideas, opinions, and knowledge out to the world. Anyone with one hundred and forty characters and a click of a button can potentially change how we see the world, spark a new interest in you, or inspire you to do the same. Another advantage is that the worldwide web expands learning opportunities and adds a new feature of being able to collaborate on learning as well. In addition, another important feature is the content is relevant to world we live in now. Even though it was critical to write about what happened in the past, it also beneficial to be able to write about what is going on around

This article attempts to enlighten educators to allow computers in the classroom as a workshop to help improve literacy. The computer allows for students to have both a visual and a verbal reference to a topic, thus, solidifying a concrete comprehension of the text, allowing the student to be further engaged and stimulated with the assignment. Over the years, educators have seen such a vast change in technology, especially in the classroom. It is time now, that educators embrace the change and use it to their advantage. “If students can be motivated and engaged when using technology, teachers should continue to support this type of learning when appropriate.”