Working Essay Draft Link

Ok here is a new link to my essay draft. Hopefully this one works.

Essay Draft

Here is the link to the draft of my essay. It still needs some work but i believe this is a good start.

Learing and Technology

Here is an article that relates new technologies with learning. It is a little lenghty but relates to previous topics.

Reflection

Overall, working with these posts has been an enjoyable experience. Blogging is definitely new to me. The most difficult thing about my writing experiences were probably trying to connect certain people’s writings with others that I didn’t feel had anything in common. For example, in our 5th post, we had to connect Harris’s view of writing in the book to Andrew Sullivan’s view on writing based on his article about blogging. Another thing I didn’t like about the blogs was the fact that I felt rushed to do the reading and post the blog since, in most cases; it had to be posted by 11 o’clock the next morning.
On a brighter note, there were a few things that I really liked about making these blogs. First, I really enjoyed being able to read somewhat controversial readings and be able to sort of respond and give my opinion on them. Writers like Hedges get me all fired up and then the blog lets me release all that. Also, I enjoyed being able to express my opinions on the readings, then, go read the opinions of my classmates and see what they thought about the same readings.
I think my views toward internet writing and reading habits has changed dramatically. Before, I thought it was just mostly people reading and writing a bunch of junk, but now I am coming to realize the importance of it all. People just don’t have the time to sit and read things anymore, so the internet is there to browse. And maybe it’s not as good as reading a real book, but at least it is reading. And without networks like facebook, most teens would never read or write anything outside of school. It is just the way the world is becoming because reading and writing just isn’t as important as it use to be, but that is perfectly fine.

Hedges vs. Thompson

I feel like Hedges is one of the most negative writers I have ever read. In the first piece we read from Hedges, America the Illiterate, he just went on and on about how people can’t read and speak as well as they use to and how there are many people who are illiterate. Now in this next piece we read by Hedges, Bad Days for Newsrooms- and Democracy, we had the pleasure of listening to Hedges rant about how the age of the reporter and the newspaper is coming to an end.
I am not disagreeing that newspapers are becoming less important, but it is perfectly OK. We live in a society that is always on the go. People don’t have time to stop and read a newspaper. About the only thing we can do is maybe turn on the news in the morning or in the evening while we are also doing other things. But there is nothing wrong with that. The news isn’t necessary to our survival. Yes it’s good to keep up with current events and know what’s going on around us but if we don’t know, it will not hurt us. Also, I would like to return to the topic of America the Illiterate. In that article, Hedges talks about how many people are illiterate and can’t read. But according to http://nces.ed.gov/naal/lit_history.asp, the enrollment of children in school is at an all time high and the illiteracy rate of teenagers is at an all time low. I know Hedges article focuses on mostly the illiteracy rate of adults, but the chances are at one point, these adults knew how to read. But for other reasons such as the job they chose or just their lifestyle, they may not need to read any longer.
Clive Thompson has a very good view on all this change. In Thompson’s article, he actually says that without facebook and social networking, most people probably wouldn’t be writing at all. He views all this as a positive change, as it should be viewed. The whole reason adults become illiterate is because they stop using their reading and writing skills so therefore they lose them. Thompson states that without the Internet, some people would never write anything again after school. So it is nice to hear a positive view of the changing of the reading and writing of our society compared to the negative views of Chris Hedges.

Less Literate America

Hedge’s view on the American public is that we are slowly getting less and less literate as time goes on. I think Hedge was a little over dramatic about this view though. It seemed like he was saying illiterate people basically can’t survive. He mentioned how people who are illiterate usually have to eat fast food because they can’t read a normal menu, but anyone can go to any restaurant and order just a burger or something simple without even looking at a menu. It’s not that hard. Also, he basically said that anybody that works at a fast food restaurant is illiterate. But that’s not true. Most of the people who work at fast food restaurants are teenagers who just need some money. They don’t work there because they are illiterate, but because it’s a good first job.
Something else in the article I had a problem with was where Hedge had a paragraph in the article about how the speaking levels of the presidents have decreased over the years. But I really can’t find a problem in that. What’s the big deal if they aren’t using big words when they speak; they are still getting their point across aren’t they? This goes for everyone too; as long as a person knows how to say what they want to say, it shouldn’t be a big deal whether or not they use big words.
When comparing Hedge’s “America the Illiterate” and Carr’s “Is Google Making Us Stupid”, there are some obvious connections. The main one is that they both see that society is beginning to read less and use things such as images instead. In Carr’s article, he talks about how America is becoming less dependent on reading and then Hedge takes over from where Carr left off and goes on about what will become of the people who are illiterate.

Google Is Making Us Stupid

I think the answer to Nicholas Carr’s “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” is a solid yes. But it’s not really just Google that’s making us stupid; it’s the internet all together. The internet is has become a substitute for almost everything. As Nicholas Carr says, “It’s becoming our map and our clock, our printing press and our typewriter, our calculator and our telephone, and our radio and TV.” This statement couldn’t be truer. The internet has become our answer to everything. It is a source of infinite information and entertainment. You can watch almost any show or movie, listen to any song, talk to anyone, and find the answer to almost any question there is.
But that is the problem, the fact that every answer we need is so conveniently located on the internet. What is the point of ever knowing anything if you can just quickly look it up on a computer or even on a phone? But all the answers you need being at your fingertips isn’t the only problem; the internet can also be a distraction. While reading the article and writing this blog, I have found myself checking my fantasy football score and answering text messages.
Nicholas Carr mentions how he and many other people are having problems being able to just sit and read like they use to and that’s probably because reading has just become an inconvenience. We are so use to our lives always being in a hurry, so nobody has time to just sit and read a book. The internet fits this lifestyle though. We can read emails, check our facebook, read a little bit of news, and do some other random things of interest in only minutes with the internet.
And this leads to the class’s internet habits. I think everyone’s internet log shows that we are all busy people with a lot to do so reading things like a book or reading for intellectual purposes just doesn’t fit into our schedule. But in the time we could be reading a book, we would much rather be checking facebook or watching a video on YouTube. So I believe that even our internet habits support Nicholas Carr’s theory that Google is making us stupid.

Harris's View On Writing

In Harris’s book on writing, he focuses more on the kind of writing done for academic purposes rather than just writing for you. It’s the kind of writing that has already been written by somebody else, but now a student must rewrite to satisfy their own needs of the information. He talks about things such as citing and not plagiarizing but those are not his main points. He mostly talks about how you can take someone else’s writing, make it into your own words, and still have the same meaning as it did before. Chapter 1 is called coming to terms, and by coming to terms Harris means exactly what I said in the sentence before, taking someone else’s work and writing it in your own language without losing its meaning. He uses a quote from an essay by Robert Coles, and in the essay William Carlos Williams says “Who’s against shorthand? No one I know. Who wants to be shortchanged? No one I know.” What this means to me is when you are looking at someone else’s writing and looking to write something using that information, it’s hard to summarize the writing without it losing its meaning.
It is hard to find connections between Sullivan’s writing and Harris’s book on writing because I feel like they are both talking about writing, but completely opposite styles of it. Harris is talking about essays which someone is usually forced to do, while Sullivan is talking about blogs which someone does because they want to. But there were a few connections to be found. But they can be connected in the fact that when doing a blog, you write about something that interests you and you may look up some information on the topic you are talking about. To put this information in your blog you have to make it into your own language which is what Harris talks about. Also, Harris mentions how there will be meanings in your text that you didn’t mean to put there. In blogging, that can happen a lot more than in academic writing because there is no editor to go over the writing and catch that stuff. It would be a lot easier to accidentally post something that can be easily taken out of context in a blog.

Internet Habits

In my Internet log, I realized that most of my time on the Internet is spent on the same few sites. It also seems to be the same with everyone else in the class. It seems as if we all sort of have a routine when it comes to being on the Internet, and all of our routines are very similar. For the most part, we all start out with email, then to facebook, and then we all kind of branch off and go our own directions.
I’m pretty sure facebook was in just about all of our logs multiple times. Also, Gmail, the universities email, was in all of our logs many times, but this is probably out of necessity. Facebook is something we choose to do for fun, while we get on to check our email more or less because we have to. So we use the Internet for social networking, but also to stay informed with important things. Something else we may only use the Internet for only because we have to is to look up information. There are certain times when we look stuff up just because we want to, but most of the time when someone gets onto Wikipedia, it is because they need to research something for an assignment.
I noticed that the first thing most of us do when we get on is check the important things, such as email and blackboard. After we check those we are free to do what we want, so next most of us get on facebook. From this point on, everyone’s log starts to vary a little. This is the part where we start going to websites more unique to our own interests. Some people got onto YouTube to watch random videos or listen to music while some people got onto some news websites to catch up on current events. This just depends on what we like.

Internet Log

(9-4-09)

1:20pm- ulink- checked my uofl email.
1:26pm- Blackboard- Checked for new assignments and read the weekly recap for my chemistry class.
1:35pm- Facebook.com- I read other peoples posts and played fish world.
1:54pm- USA Today- Attempted the daily online crossword puzzle
2:19pm- Purevolume.com- I listened to music and read some information about some bands.
4:34pm- Aol.com- I checked my AOL e-mail and deleted a lot of junk mail.
4:41pm- Google Maps- Got directions to a nearby movie theatre to take the girlfriend.
4:53pm- Pogo.com- I was bored so I played some Texas Hold-em

(9-5-09)

12:39pm- Ulink- Checked for any new e-mails.
12:45pm- Facebook.com- Read a few posts, played fish world again, and talked to a friend.
1:02pm- Youtube.com- Listened to some music
1:05pm- Pogo.com- Played scrabble and Turbo 21
1:34pm- cbssportsline.com- Checked my fantasy football team and suggested a trade with one of my friends.
3:48pm- Google Maps- Settled argument my girlfriend and I were having about which Wal-Mart was closer.

Response to "Why I Blog" by Andrew Sullivan

After reading the article “Why I Blog” by Andrew Sullivan, I believe that he blogs because it is a way to show his real self to everyone. When writing the traditional way, there are usually editors who go back and read over what you write and tell you to change certain things up. After so many edits, the writing loses its uniqueness to the person who wrote it. Everyone writes differently, and blogging is a way to show the unfiltered version of that writing. It shows the true you and how you write rather than how the editor wants you to.
He also compared blogging to many different aspects of writing a column for a newspaper, some good and some bad. One good thing about blogging rather than writing a newspaper column was the quickness that something could be posted about something like 9/11 or things like that. When something like that happens, information can be posted in a blog within hours of it happening, where if you were going to read about it in a newspaper, you would have to wait until the next day. A bad thing about writing a blog compared to writing a newspaper column is the immediate criticism. When you mess up in a newspaper column it’s no big deal. They just put a small error section in another paper a few days later. But blogging is a lot more personal because when you mess up in a blog, someone is probably going to call you out on it immediately. But being called out like that can also be a good thing because it helps you become a better writer.
So I believe that Andrew Sullivan blogs because he actually gets to personally write about things he wants to write about and he gets to freely express himself.