Fall 2018
My avatar name is Mesmerizer, due to her ability to mesmerize and distract her opponents. She uses her beauty to distract her opponents from the hunt for the eggs. Her large eyes with no pupils are easy to get hypnotized by. She is not one to play the game physically but uses strategic and tricks to over power her opponents.
Teachers have changed the way we they teach due to the advancements in the technology around us. Many years ago, when technology wasn’t as advanced as it was today everything was done by hand and yes, it took longer to do things and you could easily make more mistakes however, you were doing it all on your own and you were learning from your mistakes. In todays age, many students use technology all throughout our educational careers and they have become very dependent on it. As technology advances over the years, it should incorporated in our education system but still use some of the basic educational tools from years ago so we are still learning and not depending on technology to give us all the answers. We can do this by using technology for checking purposes, like to check a math problem in the calculator or using a grammar check om a paper. However, the basic tools to know how to do the math equation on your own and learning how to spell and write so you don’t need to use grammar check as much is still as important.
The advancements of technology have allowed students to now multitask so that were are able to do many things as one time. However, with every benefit there is a downfall and multitasking is not the best way to get things done. In the article “Neuroscientist say multitasking literally drains the energy reserves of your brain” Olivia Goldhill argues that multitasking is making you tired and draining your brain. She states “When we attempt to multitask…it uses up oxygenated glucose in the brain, running down the same fuel needed to focus on the task” (Goldhill, Neuroscientist say multitasking literally drains the energy reserves of your brain). Multitasking may seem very beneficial because you are getting so much done at one time however in the end you are not performing your best on each activity because you are focused on doing so much and in the end you are going to be tired.
My own person experience with multitasking was while doing homework I tend to watch tv, eat, or do other things. This causes me to be constantly distracted from my other work needed to be done and I am not putting all my attention into my homework so I can easily make mistakes and it may take me longer to finish it. While doing my homework and other things all at once I also find myself taking more naps or feeling more tired as time goes on. Goldhill quotes Daniel Levitin research study in her article when she says “Studies have found that people who take 15-minute breaks every couple of hours end up being more productive” (Neuroscientist say multitasking literally drains the energy reserves of your brain). This shows that for people like me who do their homework and watch tv or talk on the phone at the same time it is better to take breaks. To help solve this problem students can work for an hour and focus only on homework then for 15 minutes get on their phone or watch tv for a little while and in the end they will be more productive.
Another reason why we should not have our education system solely depend on the internet and technology because it is shown that the internet is changing the way we think and process information, and not for the better. In the article “Is google making us stupid? What the internet is doing to our brains” Nicholas Carr argues how the use of the internet has changed the way we think and read due to all of the distractions on the internet. Carr argues that the internet has changed the way we are able to read and comprehend what we are reading because know it seems to be harder to do so. Carr says, “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” (Is google making us stupid? What the internet is doing to our brains). This change he is talking about it due to the fact that unlike print, when we read on the internet we get distracted easier because there are hyperlinks, ads, pop ups, and more things that distract us from what we are trying to focus on.
I can very much relate to this article because when I find myself doing something on the internet, whether it be researching or just reading an article, it is harder to stay focus like if I was reading something on paper. Especially when I am doing homework, I can start off by reading an article and typing my essay and I will end up watching YouTube videos for hours on end. This is not good for the education system because if we use the internet over paper all of the time, students will not be able to read and comprehend something without having to read it over and over again and still may not understand all the need to know. Instead of completely converting our education system to one that is focused around technology, we can incorporate it into some aspects but still use old tools for other things. Teachers have incorporated technology and the internet so much into the lives of kids growing up now that they don’t know how to do things without the internet. We should use technology in education to help but not so much that if we no longer had it we would still be able to live and work without it. Students should be taught to do a math problem without a calculator because that’s how you learn.
In conclusion, technology provides a lot of advantages when it comes to how we do things on a daily basis and now plays a big role in our education and how we learn. However, with all of those advancements we are becoming to dependent on the technology and what is does for us and we are not learning anything on our own. In the article “The reading brain in the digital age: The science of paper versus screen”, Ferris Jabr say that both the internet and paper reading have their pros and cons and that is why we should utilize both and not completely drop one for another. In the article he says that “E-readers and tablets are becoming more popular as such technologies improve, but research suggest that reading on paper still boast unique advantages” (Jabr, The reading brain in the digital age: The science of paper versus screen). Jabr goes on in his article talking about the life with and without technology and comes to the conclusion that it is better to just use both for certain task and reason and not completely drop paper print and non-technological tools (The reading brain in the digital age: The science of paper versus screen). To solve our technology problem and the overuse of it, teachers and students need to learn when to use it and how much of it to use. Instead of using it to do everything have technology only be used as an addition to the tools we learned to use many years ago.
Technology today has become so mainstream that it has replaced almost everything we do with new inventions and innovations to make things easier. The internet is one form of technology that has became apart of our everyday lives and it has changed the way we are. The internet is so versatile and always changing that you will never see everything you can within your lifetime. You can search the web for a story on dogs and end up seeing over millions of different stories on dogs from many different people. Not only does the internet provide a vast amount of information on one topic, the amount of hyperlinks, pop ups, and ads you see while surfing the web makes can make a ten minute search for a story on dogs a 4 hour long YouTube binge watching. When someone searches the internet the amount of gifs, memes, and funny prank videos they see along with the convenience and easy access of it makes them forget about what life was like without the internet and what we used to use when we didn’t have it.
Reading is just one thing that has changed overtime along with the new innovations with technology. Technology has changed how many people read today because years ago when we didn’t have the internet there was only paper items to read. As years have went by and the internet has evolved many people have stopped using paper reading or use them a lot less then before because of how much easier and convenient it is and how it allows you to read so much more on many different topics or by different authors quickly. However, nothing is ever perfect and with every pro there is a con to go with it.
In the article, “Is google making us stupid?” we can see some of the pros and cons that are directly related to using the internet over paper reading (Carr). To understand more about the article written we first look at who Nicholas Carr is as a writer. Carr is an American writer who focuses a lot of his articles and books on technology, culture, and business. He has written for a lot of publishers like The Atlantic, The Wall Street, New York Times, etc. (Carr). His focus on technology and its positive and negative impact on our life is shown in many of his pieces of work including “Is google making us stupid”. In this article he shows us the pros and cons of reading on the internet and gives us his overall experience and opinion with online reading (Carr).
The article was written in August of 2008 which is pretty recent when the internet is now being used all the time now (Carr, Is google making us stupid?). In the 2000s we see a big increase in the amount of technology we use on a daily basis. This article being published around the time of the technology boom makes a lot of sense and many people have started to use the internet more and more during this time and reading online also became more prevalent. Since the article was posted around this time then more people will be able to relate to their experiences with reading online with Carr’s. The article was published on The Atlantic which is a large newspaper establishment and this will allow more people to read his article and get his message out.
The article was also published to an online newspaper article and instead of print. This further goes along with his argument when he argues the pros and cons of reading online vs reading from paper. Reading this article online allows the reader to see exactly what Carr is talking about when he talks about how reading online can be very distracting for a reader when we talks about all of the hyperlinks, pop ups, and ads we see in the article (Carr, Is google making us stupid?).
The purpose of the article was to explain to the reader how using the internet changes the way we are able to read and process the information we are reading (Carr, Is google making us stupid?). Carr talks about how reading on the internet has shown that it has negatively affected how we read because we are not able to read as much and concentrate or comprehend on it due to the fact that the internet and he says “I’ve had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory” (Is google making us stupid?). The internet is set up a lot differently than paper reading making is easier to get distracted while reading. Many people also prefer to read things on the internet rather than paper because it is easier and they are able to skim an article and find information easier then reading a whole book (Carr, Is google making us stupid?). In the article Carr tells us that even though the internet does have many cons to it, we shouldn’t stop using it completely but just understand the negatives it may have and find a way to be able to work around them.
Anyone who reads on the internet or with paper can read and take something away from this article. The article directed towards middle age people that have experienced both paper and internet reading at equal amounts. For someone to really understand and relate to Carr’s argument they would have needed to experience both online reading and paper reading to understand the difference between online and paper reading and they can possibly relate to the changes in how they read. Carr also directs the article to people that are growing up with nothing but technology surrounding them. He wants them to see that the just because the internet seems like a easy and great thing to use, everything has its negatives as well as its positives. This allows them to be able to relate the article more to see if they are affected just like the Carr explains in his article about how ready online affects us (Is google making us stupid?)
Link to voiceover video:
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Becoming me!
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When a child is born they all start off at the same stage, and are capable of growing and becoming anything they want to be. However, each child’s journey will be different and that makes each and everyone of us unique. Learning to read and write are the two main steps into helping you learn because without knowing how to read or write you cant do much of anything. Learning to read and write for me was a pretty easy thing to do because of the tools I was given and the people I had to help me on my journey. If I didn’t have those basic tools helping me while I was younger then my reading and writing skills may be very different today.
Learning to read sometimes seemed like a very long and stressful task for not only me but the people trying to teach me as well. I was a pretty fast learner when it came to many things growing up. However, to start learning anything you must learn the basics of how to read. Reading is the foundation of pretty much everything you will learn how to do, so this was the first thing I learned to do. I can remember my mom starting to teach me how to read before I even got to pre-school. Without reading you wouldn’t know how to play a new game you just bought because you can’t read the instructions, or learn how to bake a cake because you can’t read the ingredients. Teaching someone to read can be a hard task because you have nothing to start with because reading is the base to everything you will learn. Learning to read for me was pretty fun however because the tools my mom used allowed me to feel like I was playing a game while I was learning to read.
The biggest tool I can remember that really made and impact on how I learned to read was interactive games. There were so many teaching games on the internet that taught you so much and allowed you still have fun to the point you didn’t even realize that you were learning. I would play the games were you would click on a picture or image and the computer would say what that item was back to you. For example, if I clicked on a picture of a four legged creature with a wagging tail and wet tongue the computer would say dog. Not only would it say dog but the word would pop up on the screen. D-O-G, the word being sounded out letter by letter so I could not only see but hear how each letter was supposed to sound and how they all came together to describe that image. From that point forward that one word allowed me to understand so many more words that I see. Since I now knew what each letter in D-O-G sounded like if I saw another word that started with the letter D I automatically knew that it would make the “Duh” sound. Even though I was learning while playing these games, I didn’t notice because I was having so much fun. All of the different colored pictures and items would grab my little attention and I could go on for hours.
Once I started school I wasn’t on the computer as much and my teachers started using their own techniques to help teach us learn to read. From pre-k through first grade I can remember flashcards becoming my new best friend. Showing us different words with the pictures right beside them was like the interactive games I played at home but it was on paper. Now I was still practicing my reading and getting familiar with the letters and how to pronounce them to create words and as the years went on and I progressed from pre-k to first grade the words became harder. I remember when it was time for our reading lesson in the first grade and my sweet teacher would stand in front of the class and with a very soft voice she would slowly sound out each word with us. We would move our mouth so dramatically to sound out every letter to create the word on the flashcard. Simple tricks like that seemed crazy looking back at it but they made a very big difference and soon after that I was able to take those words and put them together to read sentences.
Writing was the next task I learned but that can take years to master because you must learn how to create the letters on paper, put them in the correct order to make a word or sentence and then develop your own writing style. I started learning to write soon after learning how to read when I got into elementary school. It took years of practice to get to where I am today. Starting off with the basics when I was learning how to write I could very much remember the stencils of letters be given out to me in class and my teacher telling us to pick up are little wooden pencils and trace the dotted grey lines on the paper. Each day we would focus on a new letter in the alphabet, practicing the whole day how to make the big A and the small a, when to use them in a sentence, and how your pencil should move around the paper to form each and every letter.
After going through the alphabet the next step was learning how to form words. The dotted lines on the paper would have multiple letter from the alphabet that I would take my pencil and trace over to form a word and then BOOM, I was writing! Tracing the letter on the papers would seem to get boring and repetitive after a while but the more I did it the easier it became and before I knew it, I didn’t even need the dotted lines anymore. I was writing on my own. Tracing helps by not only showing you visually what the letter should look like but also allowing you to practice how your pencil will flow and glide across the paper while creating those letters. How instead of creating sharp point for the letter E you must keep everything rounded like in the letter O. How just one line can change whether you are writing the letter E or F. There are so many little things you have to pay attention to when writing. However, when you write with stencils then you can see what you are trying to create and it is harder to mess up then if you didn’t have the stencil there to help you. After using this tool I pretty much had writing down, I knew how to form letters and create words and eventually sentences.
By the third grade I was pretty good at reading and writing and the next tool I would use was working books. This tool combined my reading and writing skills together and prepared me for what I seemed like the rest of my school career would consist of, having to read something or questions then writing out the answer. Workbooks and worksheets soon went from a helpful tool to a pain. The simple and fun stories about two kids and a park and questions about the color of the slides didn’t last long. By middle school and then high school the passages weren’t as fun and became harder and the questions caused you to think a lot more and use more then what was just in the story but analysis came into play. However, it helped because it continued to build on my vocabulary and sentence structure while I was reading and then I could use those while reading and then I could take that to help with my writing as well.
My journey of learning to read and write is probably different from a lot of other people but the journey I went on allowed me to become a strong reader and write today. Because of the things I experienced and went through I was able to be put into a lot of advance classes. This helped me become more advanced and a strong student and because of that and the hard work I put into my education, I was able to get into Stevenson University and this will continue to push me one step closer to my goal of becoming a Pediatric Oncologist. To become a doctor it will be a lot of hard work and dedication and right now getting my major in nursing it will still be a long and tedious process. However, I will always remember the interactive games, flashcards, stencil books and workbooks because they helped me get to where I am today, and I will forever be grateful and continue to build on the things I already know to get me to my future career goal.