Assignment Description Unit 4

• Prompt and assignment description for unit 4
• Peer review form and rubric for assignment 4
• Graff, "How to Write an Argument" 
• Excerpts from They Say/I Say (Graff and Berkenstein) that provide templates for agreeing, disagreeing, partially agreeing/disagreeing, etc., with what "they" have said.
• Kassorla, "Digital tools for education and personal learning" (solution-based text). 
• Some ideas for responding to Carr and  Thompson
• Example of critical digital literacy skills: http://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/10/02/skills-and-strategies-fake-news-vs-real-news-determining-the-reliability-of-sources/ 
• Recent text that extends Carr's position: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/29/opinion/sunday/addicted-to-distraction.html  

 

 

 

Texts that Respond to Carr

• Shirky, "Does The Internet Make You Smarter?" (pdf,  web page)  This text takes on Carr's claims directly, acknowledging some of his points but complicating the overall argument.
• Pinker, "Mind Over Mass Media" Pinker challenges Carr, mounting a direct and rather dismissive attack on his entire project.
• Howard Rheingold, "Attention Literacy."  Rheingold argues that "you need to learn how to exercise mindful deployment of your attention online if you are going to become a critical consumer of digital media." Rheingold does not believe the internet inevitably produces the effects Carr claims, but suggests that students must be taught how to manage and be aware of how they direct their attention. 
• IQ Squared debate (Carr and his friend Andrew Keen argue with two opponents in an Oxford style debate. There is also a transcript. 
• Encyclopedia Britannica hosted a forum on Carr's text. Many prominent writers responded with some short, lively posts. Here, for example,  is Clay Shirky's "Why Abundance is Good: A Reply to Nick Carr." Some of these texts support Carr, some extend his claims, others complicate, challenge or qualify them.

• Edge magazine hosted an online debate of Carr's article.  Again, there are a lot of short texts by prominent writers and prognosticators, including W. Daniel Hillis, Kevin Kelly, Larry Sanger, George Dyson, Jaron Lanier,Douglas Rushkoff,W. Daniel Hillis, David Brin  

 

Texts You Can Draw on to "Enter the Conversation"

• Jabr, F. (2013).  Scientific American. ‘The Reading Brain in the Digital Age: The Science of Paper versus Screen. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/reading-paper-screens/  
• Hooper and Herath,  Is Google Making Us stupid? The Impact of the Internet on Reading Behaviour’.  
• Sparrow, B., Liu, J., Wegner, D M. (2011) Google Effects on Memory: Cognitive Consequences of Having Information at Our Fingertips. Safer Communications. [online] July. Sciencexpress, Sciencemag. Available at: http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~wegner/pdfs/science.1207745.full.pdf  
• PBS video on new media and changes in cognition (10 minutes).  Science correspondent Miles O'Brien looks at what could be happening to teenagers' brains as they develop in a rapid-fire, multitasking world of technology and gadgets. Jan 5, 2011.
• Jones & Hafner, “Information Everywhere" and "Critical Digital Literacy" 
• "Serious reading takes a hit from online scanning and skimming, researchers say." By Michael S. Rosenwald, Published: April 6. 
• Is Online Skimming Hurting Reading Comprehension? Transcript (and audio) of Robin Young's interview with Maryanne Wolf, cognitive neuroscientist at Tufts University. Wolf discusses her concerns and her research. She fears that the practice of the internet is ruining our ability for “deep reading.” 
• Students Reading E-Books Are Losing Out, Study Suggests. By ANNIE MURPHY PAUL. New York Times, APRIL 10, 2014
• To Remember a Lecture Better, Take Notes by Hand Students do worse on quizzes when they use keyboards in class. ROBINSON MEYER, Atlantic Monthly, MAY 1 2014.
• What’s Lost as Handwriting Fades? MARIA KONNIKOVAJUNE 2, 2014 New York Times.
• The World is Digital, But Please Close Your Laptop in Class. By Peter C. Herman. (SDSU Professor) 
•  Hyper and Deep Attention: The Generational Divide in Cognitive Modes. Katherine Hayles. Profession 2007. 
• The Flight From Conversation. New York Times, April 21, 2012. Sherry Turkle is a psychologist and professor at M.I.T. and the author, most recently, of “Alone Together: Why We Expect More From Technology and Less From Each Other.”
• Why Can’t Johnny Write? Don’t Blame Social Media.  http://mashable.com/2013/03/04/social-media-ffect-on-writing/ 
•   “2b or not 2b?”  David Crystal. The Guardian, July 2008.  Despite doom-laden prophecies, texting has not been the disaster for language many feared, argues linguistics professor David Crystal. On the contrary, it improves children's writing and spelling
•  Talking With Your Fingers By JOHN MCWHORTER, April 23, 2012.
•  John McWhorter, TED talk: Txtng is killing language. JK!!

More Resources and Ideas

• ALTERNATIVE theory - the fragmented, jarring, attention-disrupting nature of digital media is largely (or also) a function of commercialism, not the technology itself. Consider early educational hypertext, which fostered deep reading, and helped establish context, rather than disrupt it. Could make analogy with news - it used to be relatively slow, integrated, focused on context, etc. Now it is like an MTV music video. 
• Astra Taylor explores this in this book review: http://www.bookforum.com/inprint/020_02/11685 
• Eli Pariser (abour 2.4 minutes) talks about the dangers of the "filter bubble." From IQ squared debate. He suggests the problem with Google is not that it scatters our attention, but that it narrows our views and encases us in "bubbles." It's less about losing our minds, and more about "closing" our minds.
• In opposition (or to qualify) this, we have EXAMPLE OF ACTIVISM AIDED BY SOCIAL MEDIA – IT GETS BETTER PROJECT http://www.itgetsbetter.org/
  http://www.itgetsbetter.org/#7IcVyvg2Qlo, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_Gets_Better_Project
  DAN SAVAGE on the inspiration for his project - he realized in age of YouTube and twitter he didn't need permission (2 mins)
•  Louis ck on cellphones and developing a self https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HbYScltf1c 

 

 

End of Semester Review and the WPA

 

• End of semester review and information on future writing classes and the WPA