Standing Ovation: reading response #3

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

reading response #3

Reading Response #3

Digital Nation

Elena Golovin

In Rachel Dertzin’s Documentary “Digital Nation” her correspondent Douglas Rushkoft and her, try to find how the use of technology impacts our lives. They examine how the use of technology is changing our academic ability to think well and clear. How the use of technology is a cultural change for the air force and whether it can help students with multitasking. Dertzin and Rushkoft also study if the use of Internet can be an addiction or a distraction. They document their research from a variety of professors in universities to principals in the New York Bronx. From places like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge to the Stanford University in Palo Alto California.

Jashon Levy principal of New York’s South Bronx quotes “We have to embrace the fact that our kids today are going to need different skills five years from now than they needed five years ago” Levy claims that the change in technology is going to change our future jobs because almost every job in today’s day uses technology. So as technology continues to develop so will our future jobs.

Douglas Rushoft quotes “ If you turn of your email program it’s not the software that is going to complain it’s the people on the other side, your friends, your boss, and your bills.” He elaborates that technology is a distraction and we can’t fight distraction in isolation, if we are going to face the problems of distraction we have to do it together in order to succeed.

Professor Clifford Nass at the Stanford University studied brain images of multitaskers vs. non-multitaskers. He conducted an experiment to see if students can actually do two or more things at once and how quickly they can change from on subject to another. Nass quotes “It turns out multitaskers are terrible at every form of multitasking and they are worse at analytical reasoning.” Based on his research Nass found that student’s brains are not capable of multitasking even if they claim they can. He quotes “In general, our brain can’t do two things at once.”

I believe that technology isn’t necessarily good or bad. I think that technology can open doors and close windows. The Internet can provide us with a variety of information with an instant click of a button. However with all the opportunities he Internet gives us it can also cause problems. When using the Internet constantly I noticed that my brain begins to function like a computer. When I start reading I often feel like I’m in a hurry so I don’t take the time to sit down and analyze what I am reading. I often find myself skimming through the text with out giving the text to much thought. Technology is a powerful and helpful at the same time. If we take advantage of technology it will takes us to places we’ve never been before. And if we miss this opportunity to discover new things we miss our opportunity to grow in ourselves and as a society.

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Welcome

Welcome to our Eng 100 Blog “Standing Ovation”! The title of this blog refers to the audience of active readers we are creating by sharing our academic writing for Eng 100 with a larger group of students, instructors, academics, and just about anybody who chooses to follow our blog! When you write and post your reader responses here (and, later, as you write your essays for the course), I encourage you to use this audience to conceptualize who you are writing for and, most important, how to communicate your ideas so that this group of academic readers and writers can easily follow your line of thinking. Think about it this way: What do you need to explain and articulate in order for the other bloggers to understand your response to the essays we’ve read in class? What does your audience need to know about those essays and the authors who wrote them? And how can you show your readers, in writing, which ideas you add to these “conversations” that take place in the texts we study?
As students of Eng 100, you will use this blog to begin conversations with other academic writers on campus (students and instructors alike). We become active readers of each other’s writing when we comment on posts here. And, best of all, we are using this space to share ideas! I encourage you to use this blog to further think through the topics and writing strategies you will be introduced to this quarter. As always, be sure to give credit to those people whose ideas you borrow for your own thinking and writing (you should do this in the blog by commenting on their post, but you will also be required to cite what you borrow from your peers/instructors if and when it winds up in your essays. More details on that later).
Finally, keep in mind that writing to and for this audience is a good way to prepare for the panel of readers (faculty at WCC) who will be reading and assessing your writing portfolio at the end of the quarter. I hope that as a large group of active readers, we can better prepare each other for this experience. But, in the meantime, let’s have fun with it!