Personal Narrative Analysis

With the rampant year over year releases and innovations in the consumer sector, computers and tablets are cheaper than ever. While one may argue that devices still remain more expensive than a simple notepad and pencil, students opting not to use a computer will accrue incrementally more costs for notebooks and/or paper, binders, the printing of class notes, and hard copy textbooks for each course. With PDF and online textbooks now available, at substantially lower costs, tech savvy students have additional cost and use advantages. Further, digital resources permit publishers to regularly update e-textbook forms. This is relevant for schools that utilize one text for multiple years and better ensures accuracy and currency. Beyond the economic benefits, computers have other practical advantages. They significantly reduce the amount of weight students carry in knapsacks, improve ergonomics, and ameliorate possible future absenteeism and medical costs due to back injury. Finally, reduced paper consumption and its footprint are more environmentally friendly and consistent with the University of Toronto’s sustainability

The article I chose to read is More Substance, Less Hype: Using Digital Texts to Support Readers by Sarah Lundy. Lundy is a social studies teacher in the Pacific North West who incorporated digital texts in the classroom. Her goal was not to add technology to the classroom just to be more relevant or hip, but she added digital texts to differentiate, scaffold, and accommodate her students. She said, “A thoughtfully designed digital text provides a powerful resource for meeting diverse learning needs while developing critical literacy skills (Lundy, 2015, p. 101).” Lundy added digital texts to her classroom with the help of iPad’s and iBooks Textbooks.

Throughout the past year I went through a great deal of undertakings that caused me to become more experienced with my skills and how to overcome various challenges. These really built up my character and the way I am today. In all aspects, this past year consisted of going to Killington, Vermont, my brother going into the Air Force, meeting him in Texas for his graduation of basic training, completing a double backflip on a trampoline, landing a front flip on flat ground, accomplishment of a 2 ½ front flip on a diving board, getting 2nd at leagues, and competing in districts. All of these activities have advanced me in a skill or challenged me to an extent.

Whilst investigating my literacy topic on placement I decided to not only interview my mentor teacher but also interview two students to gain their perspective on the use of technology. I believed their point of you view was valuable to my findings and wanted to discover firsthand if students are enjoying and finding the use of technology helpful in their literacy classes. Whilst assisting on placement I approached two children and interviewed them at different times, the two children in particular were very forward and honest when sharing their opinions with me. From their opinions they expressed in the short interview (refer to Appendix 1) it is evident the two students would rather read an eBook than a book and find it exciting and fun, this would cause more engagement and focus on the text. The two students also mentioned that pictures in the eBook are animated and this helps make sense of the story. It is clear that an interactive reading experience, acquires students with a greater comprehension of a text (Hutchison, Beschorner and Schmidt-Crawford 2012). These findings support my research question relating to the importance of learning literacy with the assistance of technology. Another artefact to support this matter (refer to Appendix 2) is a task students completed, which involved them writing up a draft of a poem and later they were to type up the final copy. A number of students were completing their draft on a laptop, I asked the teacher why they were not

Due to this reasoning, Wong implies that the people in charge of education are under the notion that, because this is the digital age, students must already be fluent and know how to exactly intertwine technology into everyday life. Yet, this is not the case, glamorizing this notion is faulty with the several complications that fall in line, such as being clueless as to how to perceive things on the internet, and, of course, the dangers. Another problem with having technology incorporated into education, as suggested by Loewy in Wong’s article, is that there are educators out there who feel “digitally illiterate,” and it is of no help when there’s an increase of demand with mixing school content and electronics together. How is teaching “digitally illiterate” students possible, when the educators themselves are “digitally illiterate?” It only creates a paradox and creates further issues. If the people in charge of education want to place electronics as a needed material, they should, at the very least, teach their educators. That is why, according to a teacher in Florida, the solution to these problems is to have a “‘coherent plan to teach digital citizenship in schools’- not as an add-on,”

Even though the children are raised on technology, paper books are better. Our kids need a break from technology.

For many, their formative years have a large influence on who they become as adults. This can happen in many different ways including new experiences, discovering a new sport or hobby, and uncovering what they are passionate about. For me, this was falling in love with a new language from a very young age and becoming very interested in the culture that was associated with it.

I am forty four years old with three children and a wonderful husband. I grew up in Oklahoma and later moved to Kansas, and then Arizona where I finished my degree is Political Science at Arizona State University. My career goals were to attend law school after undergrad, so that I could be an advocate for children that were suffering serious injustices back then, and sadly they still seem to be suffering those injustices today.

Failure is truly negative if we choose to not learn from it. When we face setbacks and difficulties, we are given golden opportunities to grow as people. Learning from our shortcomings makes us wiser, stronger, and unveils a chance to turn an undesirable outcome into a building block of character. My hockey career has been a sinusoidal trail of highs and lows, but I always learned from the downturns.

So, I was reading the 1760 Spotlight on the GA Website and it says you have been at GA for 28 years, I would consider that a long time…what is the reason you have been here so long?

Just like *meow*... and then * pew, pew*... she's gone. Just like *snap* that. Gone in an instant. She lived a long, great 43 years. But who am I? I'm her daughter. We were very close, and we shared many memories from the time i was born up until now. For example, the time I was 7, i'm 15 now, and i was learning to be polite and ask humans for food by looking cute. On the first day my mom taught me, she went first and sge did it with ease. Then it was my turn. I went up to a child and looked as cute as i could. Just as the child was about to pet me, this bigger human, I guess it was his mother, came over and kicked me. Me and my mom ran away together back home and told me, '' See, Amilyee, I told you not to go to that human, but you went anyway and look what happened!" she laughed. Then, she took me to get a cone of ice cream from The Cat's Pawlor to make me feel better. SHe ordered my favorite ice cream flavor, Mother's Milk. and all was right again.

When people use print over digital text their comprehension improves drastically. According to the article “Print still matters”, “It demonstrates that students preferred and performed better when reading on screens. But their actual performance intended to suffer.” This is one important reason why digital text isn't as great as it sounds. Print text has been used for centuries during B.C and throughout A.D. It was the only type of medium we had, then why are we trying to substitute it with digital text? Its been used for education and pleasure for many years. It's how we learned from the very beginning of time and how we comprehend today. Computers and the internet have only been around for about thirty years, unlike pencil and

Being digitally literate also relates to the everyday things that we do such as reading the newspaper or a magazine or even writing a letter. Most newspapers and magazines can be found online today and that can make things easier for us in our day to day lives. With that technology, we no longer have to carry around some giant newspaper or even a magazine. We have the ability to put them on our computers of even an iPad and access them from anywhere that you have internet access. Plus having this technology allows us to be able to search for certain articles without having to scan through an entire newspaper or magazine. Along with having the ability to read newspapers and magazines digitally, those companies are also adding more pictures and links that just add that much more to the stories. Even the newspaper companies such as the New York Times have evolved with this digital trend by adding more color photos, charts, different fonts and even colored fonts in an attempt to make their publications more attractive. While there are

Many people appreciate “the smell of the paper and the feeling of holding it in our hands” (Marcovitz 55). Many people prefer the flipping of pages rather than the swipe of the screen. Some people still do not know how or why they should use electronic devices for reading. “It’s no wonder that a lot of the people I talk to are confused by ebooks. They don’t know which way to turn, which e-reader to use, or why they should even use them” (Merkoski 161). It is important for children to know what a real book is like. “Without the balance of children holding and touching and learning how to take care of a book, you run the risk of children losing a sense of what books are and how they feel… you lose the understanding on how they came to be (66-67). Only using electronic devices for reading loses a person’s touch with the past and with

20 years ago, many families had basic cable TV’s and computers the size of a desk in an elementary classroom. As the years passed, computers got smaller and smaller and finally reached the size where they could fit into a small backpack. Because of that, and because of the recent push to turn the world into a greener, more environmentally clean planet, public schools throughout America decided to kick textbooks to the curb in order to cut printing to save trees and to cut the costs that come along with putting the books together and distributing them. These same schools across the nation have taken the technological plunge and have begun to replace textbooks in K-12 schools with their electronic equivalent, tablets and e-books. Among these