Reading Response One

“The New Literacy,” an internet article written by Clive Thompson and published by Wired Magazine, covers the contentious subject about technology and how it is affecting our writing habits and skills in positive and possibly negative ways. One negative point made in the article was that texting jargon is finding its way into student’s school writing; the notion was later disproved and labeled as a myth after Lunsford a professor of writing at Stanford University stated that she had not found any texting shorthand throughout her first year student’s assignments. On a positive note, the article claims that advancements in communication technology is “reviving our ability to write and pushing it in bold new directions,” as stated in the text.
After reading the article and making connections with it in my own experiences and views on the topic. I found that to me technology is a like a double edged sword. Our relationship with technology in our daily lives has its favorable and unfavorable impact on our writing habits and developmental skills. As stated in the article, the current generations are writing exponentially more outside of school then previous generations. Also, not only do we use writing as form of communication more, but, as stated in “The New Literacy” our audience has changed drastically too. Because of the growing popularity of ‘Blogs’ and social networking websites such as Myspace and Facebook writing has gained a much broader audience then before. Before the age of the internet, as stated in the article, previous generations would typically only produce well structured written ideas in a school setting and rarely outside.
The internet does make much favorable advancements in this generation’s writing. Giving access to a limitless database of information gives writers more than what they could bargain for. But on a side note, the internet can also become a distraction for student writers; the computer that sits in front of them also gives access to an inexhaustible amount of distractions too. Creating and fueling reasons for procrastination and a lack of focus on in class and out of class assignments. Not only can a personal internet connection give motivation to distract students in class, but another culprit and mobile device, the cell phone.
On another side note, but still related to the article, texting jargon may not appear to have an effect on a student’s academic writing performance, but it can and does have an adverse effect on a student’s center of attention in class. My generation’s infatuation with always wanting to be connected and in contact with one another has found its way into the classroom as a distraction. It’s apparent that it’s the student’s decision to create a distraction for themselves, but the fact that some students do text in class does make cell phone usage and texting have a somewhat of a negative impact on focus in the classroom.
Although it is heavily debated for obvious reasons weather or not technology’s association and usage of writing for communication has a negative or positive impact on academic writing. It does have a double edged sword like effect with favorable and unfavorable aspects, but in my opinion, the positive greatly outweighs any negative impact on a student’s writing it might have.