Author: jkahan

Jason Kahan- VR pitch

Emergency situations can happen any moment, at anytime during the day and there is not much that is taught how to handle these situations. Children are of course taught to call 911, put are most likely never put into that situation, or seen what that emergency situation would look. Some common emergency situations that could happen normally could be, a fire in the house, someone choking or passing out, or someone trying to break into your house. All common emergencies that children or adults may not be prepared for if not been in that situation. With a new educational virtual reality students could be shown emergency situations through the VR goggles and assess the situation to figure what the first step to take.

This new technology will be marketed to elementary schools for younger children to use in the classroom. You would only need to sell a classroom size set as the lesson being taught through the VR would only about an hour which would be about the time for a lesson. You would sell to a school district through salesmen that would teach the school district how to use the technology and show the administrator’s what situations can be shown.

This new technology will have ground breaking visuals as it will show emergency situations that could either be in a kid friendly animation or life-like graphics. When you start up the lesson the teacher will show the whole class a simulation. During the simulation it would pause and a question will pop up and ask what the next action you should take. This will be a step above what is being taught now. There is no current country wide mandated curriculum being used to taught emergency situations. FEMA the Federal Emergency Management Agency does offer curriculum from first to twelve grade, but it outdated as being published in 2013. This program is just a 30 page packet that has various learning activities like matching and short quizzes.  FEMA describes this program as, “This standards-based, cross-curricular program is designed to provide students in grades 1 and 2 with the knowledge, awareness, and life-saving skills needed to prepare for a variety of emergencies and disasters.” (Youth Emergency Preparedness Curriculum-Grades 1-2, 1). This new VR simulation will provide students with a more life-like look at emergency situations to replace the outdated packets being used now.

 

van kahan

I designed my avatar to looked like a young bald man as a power stand against other gunters as that might be intimidating. His bald head and popping eyes is something that people would not tend to stare at for a while especially if I was staring them down. I’ve named him van kahan as he looks kinda van diesel from the fast and furious movies. I think he has the looks to find the egg.

Calming the Storm – Jason Kahan

Jason Kahan

Dr. Licastro

English 151

11 October 2018

“Calming the Storm”

Technology has taken over our lives by storm. Almost everywhere in life new technologies are surpassing old ones. Not just higher-tech cars or computers, but even simple wrist watches are being replaced by smart or Apple watches. Technology has made especially extraordinary improvements in how we learn in the classroom. Books are now being replaced with tablets, and whiteboards are being replaced by smartboards. Kids are learning differently than they have in the past as they now have the availability to multiple sources. Some people may argue that these new technologies have affected kids’ ability to get the most out what they learn, but in fact these new technologies have improved children’s ability to learn. With new technologies being created, educators should incorporate them to improve children’s learning.

 

The internet is changing the way we comprehend our readings. New platforms like Twitter and Instagram are affecting how much we want to read before losing attention and becoming side tracked. The cause of all this all of the scrolling and multiple authors about of multiple different things. This means that educators must adjust how they teach their students. These adjustments would be comparable the ones made in the past as new technologies were being presented as well. As said in “The Deep Space of Digital Reading”, “The quality of digital media poses one kind of problem for the reading brain; the quantity of information available to the wired reader poses a different and more serious problem. But it’s worth noting that readers have faced this problem before, too. Gutenberg printed his first Bible in 1455, and by 1500, some 27,000 titles had been published in Europe, in a total of around 10 million copies. The flood of printed matter created a reading public, and changed the way that people read.” (La Farge) This means that times have adjusted to what technologies are being used to read. People had to adapt to learn how to read rather than being told the stories through word of mouth. Educators must do as they did in the past and now adjust to teaching kids how to comprehend reading while reading on a screen.

 

There are big differences between reading on a screen versus a book. First is the feel of both of them, one you can follow with your finger and feel the words on he page and the other lights up the words for you to read. While reading on the screen, you lose the ability to turn the page and instead scroll down. There are devices like the Kindle that try to recreate that feeling of turning the page, but most articles published require scrolling down. Educators again must adjust to how pieces of writing are being published and adjust their teachings to better the children’s comprehension while reading articles online. If this means teaching kids to learn how to read on a tablet instead of a book then that is what must be done. After all, reading is just dissecting the words being shown on the screen and processing what is being said. “When we read, we construct a mental representation of the text in which meaning is anchored to structure.” (Jabr) “The Reading Brain in the Digital Age: The Science of Paper versus Screens” This being said, teachers will now have to adjust to teaching their kids how to mentally represent the text, not on a book, but on a screen.

Our education system needs to adapt to the digital age to maximize productivity of our students. Our society is demanding more and more from workers and this means workers must be able to multitask. Multitasking is a skill that educators must effesize when teaching so their kids will be able to focus on not just one thing but balance between both. As Davidson says in

“Now You See It”,  “Multitasking is the ideal mode of the twenty-first century, not just because of our information overload but because of our digital age was structured without anything like a central node broadcasting one stream of information that we pay attention to at a given moment.” (Davidson 6) The skill of multitasking being taught will also help broaden the children’s minds to be able to focus on more than one thing. Educators can use reading on a screen as a way to also teach multitasking. When reading on a screen, other pages will be open and ads will be on the screen. This is good practice for the children to focus on what they are trying to accomplish while noticing and observing other things going on. Multitasking is not just working on multiple things but focusing on what is important but also keeping in mind other things going on. This is essential in the digital age and reading with new technologies will allow for our children being taught to accomplish much more.

 

New technologies are being developed every day and will still further develop as time goes on. It is the responsibility of our educators to also be up to date and teach what the world is using at the moment. As there are classes now teaching how to use computers, in the future there will be classes teaching people how to use holograms to learn. All this and more is why it is so important for educators to incorporate new technologies in their teaching so our kids can be up to date. Technologie has taken over our lives, and it is our educators jobs to call the storm.  

 

Rhetorical Analysis on The Reading Brain in The Digital Age: The Science of Paper Versus Screens

Ferris Jabr, author of The Reading Brain in the Digital Age: The Science of Papers versus Screens informs his audiences with informational articles on various topics. Jabr is an experienced writer as he writer for multiple sites like The New Yorker, The New York Time Magazine, and Scientific American. He currently is still writing for those sites at in house in Portland Oregon and has been published recently. Known for his scientific articles Jabr spends a lot of his time writing about the environment and how humans interact with it. Jabr has a masters in journalism from New York University, and a Bachelors of Science from Tufts University. During his at Tufts University he study not only english but psychology. During an interview with the website Student Voices Jabr says, “So, for me, science writing is an incredibly effective a way to communicate how the world works. I also hope to write pieces that people enjoy reading.” (An Interview with Ferris Jabr). For this specific article Jabr talks about how what source you are reading on can affect what you comprehend. Ferris Jabr has proven to himself to be a very reliable source with an ample amount of knowledge about how our brain works and how it is changing with times.

As for the audience is concerned, Ferris Jabr tends to aim his writing towards educators and avid readers. The information that is being presented in The Reading Brain in the Digital Age: The Science of Papers versus Screens is written at a level any high schooler would not have trouble reading. This allows for the article to be read easily and easy to follow. Jabr includes many facts about studies to back up his points in the article. Whenever he claims something in the text he provides a study done to back up his points. He does this to tell the audience that his claims are not of his own personal opinions but one developed through information. Jabr uses different techniques to grab the audience’s attention like either stating facts about a study, or a story of someone. To start the article uses story of a little girl whos is mistaking a magazine for an ipad. He states, “In a viral YouTube video from October 2011 a one-year-old girl sweeps her fingers across an iPad’s touch screen, shuffling groups of icons. In the following scenes she appears to pinch, swipe and prod the pages of paper magazines as though they too were screens.” (The Reading Brain in the Digital Age: The Science of Papers versus Screens) This introduces the article’s main argument with a fun story that intreads people to keep on reading. The rest of the article can be geared towards anyone who reads on either e-readers or a book, but the targeted audience is educators. Jabr gives results of studies that tell if children read better n tablets or when reading with a book. It tells eductors which source is best for the students to best comprehend what they are reading. Jabr does a great job at balancing not just writing to educators, but to anyone who is just scrolling through Scientific American and was interested in the article.

The purpose for Ferris Jabr to write this article was to inform the readers the science behind reading on a screen versus a book. He tells the readers the advantages of reading on a book rather than reading on a screen. He goes through the effects of the digital age has had on how kids learned how to read and write. Jabr structures his article in a way which he would claim why the digital age is affecting how people read, and then explains why that is through evidence. He wants to inform people like educators the effects of learning to read on a screen, or reading too much on a screen. His argument of this claim is that students become less interested in reading while reading on a screen, and do not comprehend as much as opposed to reading on paper. He backs up this argument with, “evidence from laboratory experiments, polls and consumer reports indicates that modern screens and e-readers fail to adequately recreate certain tactile experiences of reading on paper that many people miss and, more importantly, prevent people from navigating long texts in an intuitive and satisfying way. In turn, such navigational difficulties may subtly inhibit reading comprehension.” (The Reading Brain in the Digital Age: The Science of Papers versus Screens). Jabr claims his argument and then provides results of studies to to defend it.

This article was written in the spring of 2013, e-readers have been out for almost 6 years as the Kindle first came out in 2007. This being published in about 5 years ago means the information can still be used, but might be a little outdated as new studies might have been done. This being said all the research will be up to date with the article. Jabr also mentions past studies that have been done on the topic. Here Jabr states, “Before 1992 most studies concluded that people read slower, less accurately and less comprehensively on screens than on paper. Studies published since the early 1990s, however, have produced more inconsistent results:”  (The Reading Brain in the Digital Age: The Science of Papers versus Screens). Then later on the article Jabr will dissect later studies to help argue his claim. Beside him mentioning research being done before 1992 the information in the article is still relevant as the latest study he mentions was a study done by Anne Mangen of the University of Stavanger in Norway in 2013. This being posted on Scientific American gives it more credibility as Scientific American is a well known site that post multiple articles every day.

The piece of writing is an essay. Jabr uses an interesting and funny story as an introduction to interest people in reading the article. He uses other people’s quotes and studies to emphasize and prove his point. When reading this article, the reader does not the feeling that Jabr is trying to convince the reader that e-readers are terrible and should have never been made, but him telling the reader that reading on a screen can affect how you learn. Jabr wrote a very easy to follow article that was easy to comprehend. It was a great article to let readers know what the difference is between reading on a screen compared to a book.

 

My Literacy Journey

Jason Kahan

Literacy Narrative

 

My literacy journey has taken me to where I am today at Stevenson University. I started this journey with my mother reading to me when I was younger. She started with fun Dr. Seuss stories like Yertle The Turtle and Cat in the Hat. This was just for fun before I would go to bed, and it was a great time for all of us. This lead to books where I would sound out the word and form sentences. Books like Go, Dog, Go, and  Caps for Sale were among my favorites. This is where I would practice reading until I could sound out almost any simple word. Throughout elementary school I would progress and started reading books that were longer like The Magic Tree House series and A Diary of a Wimpy Kid. I would say this was the peak of my literacy career, as fifth grade was the last year my mother made me read every night. Since then I would read books, just not as often as I’ve never prioritized my reading. One of my favorite reads would have to be the Hunger Game series.  I loved the concept, but all the books in high school I never enjoyed. This lead me to dread reading for school as a whole because I hated being assigned reading. That has lead my to where I am now, where from time to time I will listen to audiobooks in my car with my father, or by myself. However, I rarely find myself sitting down and reading a book.

 

When learning to read I would always have to practice, practice, practice. My mother is an elementary school teacher, so it was installed on me when I was younger that I had to practice my reading. Whether it was doing my homework for the night, or her giving me more work to do because my teacher did not assign any. My mother cares a lot about me, and she really wanted me to master this skill at an early age. This came into my mind now writing about this because of all the time my mother made to read when it was summer time. In elementary school when we were on summer break, my mother made my sister and I read together to freshen our skills. This was very annoying to me, and despised almost every moment of it. While all my friends went about and enjoyed their summer’s I was still reading during the summer. Do not get me wrong I still had loads of free time to do what I pleased, but I thought I was just the only one who had to keep on reading during summertime.  This meant sitting down with my older sister Nicole, who was a much better reader than I was, and read my books out loud her. Every night I would mowp my way into my parents room, sit on their bed, and read out loud to my sister with my mother watching over. During those 15-20 minutes, it always seemed like the longest 15 minutes of my life. Just feeling the little paperback books make me cringe. And then hearing my mother correct me when I mispronounce a word wrong and me just getting frustrated with it.

 

My handwriting has never been anything to brag about, but nor is it so bad that people can’t read it. I don’t ever take the time to really think about it when I am writing, I am just trying to write as quick and efficient as possible. I never really take the time to think about how my handwriting is looking. When I was younger I would have to really focus as my handwriting was awful in elementary school. Teacher could not understand it and it was looking like I was falling behind as the teacher could not understand what I was trying to show. This all changed when I was introduced to this special grip which helped with handwriting. This pencil grip that slides on and off your pencil taught me how to actually hold a pencil the right way. It had three indents on it where you put your thumb, index finger, and middle finger. It forced me to hold the pencil the correct way so I could get the best out of my handwriting. I took this pencil grip everywhere I went in elementary school. Even when doing math, which I was already adapted to writing my numbers the right way, I used this pencil grip. I used this pencil grip all the way up to fourth grade where I didnt think I needed to use it anymore, but still preferred to have it on my pencil as I been so adapted to it.

 

That is how I learn to write on paper, but since we live in the 21st century we have the opportunity to use technology. I first learned how to type in my 3rd grade class, but it was a very easy and fun program where you located the letters on the keyboard. Then in 6th grade we had to take a typing class where I learned how to type faster and more efficiently. That was all for learning to type, but I used different technologies as a kid to learn. My favorite was my leapfrog which allowed me to read on it. This was helpful as it sounded out words for you and was really fun and interactive. I would take this on long car trips to Pittsburgh with my family. As I got older I matured from the leapfrog and I would play reading games on my Ipod. I forget what the app was called, but it made you read a passage and then answer questions about it for comprehension. My mother was being so strict about reading that she made me download that app and I had to do it on long car rides as well. It wasn’t very hard to do, but I would have much rather played angrybirds. Now being much older my father would just play one of his audio books for all of us to listen in the car. These I would enjoy as I could just sit back and listen rather than answering questions about it. Also it was very relaxing especially being in the car for more than six hours. These technologies really helped me progress my reading and writing skills and were for most of the time, fun doing.

 

All these tools helped me to get to where I am today in my literacy journey, but I can use these processes to better my reading in the future. Obviously I am not going to be using a pencil grip on my pencil, but I can focus on my handwriting more when turning in papers. Also I dont have my mother telling me to read every night anymore, but to better my reading I can elect about 20 minutes per day, either reading or following along with an audiobook. Another way to better my writing is doing pomodoro everyday. Also being in 2018 we have endless technologies to better reading. I could purchase a kindel which has plenty of books. There are endless options where I can better my reading, but it is up to myself to actually practice, as there is no one telling me to do it. I will read more as I want to better my comprehension and my ability to read faster.  

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