This quote shocked me due to the fact that you hear so many older generations stating how awful children's writing has become. I hear this constantly at school about how many errors students are making in their writing especially in English class. I was shocked to realize that the number and ratio of errors has remained fairly constant. The only thing to change was the type of error. To me, this is unique because I was an individual that thought writing has progressively gotten worse over the years....guess not!
"The United States is diverging from the policies of some other countries. Next year, for the first time, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which administers reading, math and science tests to a sample of 15-year-old students in more than 50 countries, will add an electronic reading component. The United States, among other countries, will not participate. A spokeswoman for the Institute of Education Sciences, the research arm of the Department of Education, said an additional test would overburden schools (Rich 2008)."
After reading this article, I agree that reading on the internet is reading and it does give students many different perspectives. It also helps to eliminate information that is not needed. State education agencies are promoting that teachers incorporate media into our classrooms more often. However, why are we not testing these skills that the state would like us to incorporate. They frequently state that if we can relate to students and their generation, then they will be able to recall/understand content material easier. Why are we not doing this and testing this content material? Rather, the state would like to stay in past generations and continue down the same path that is bringing unwanted results. The state does not seem to mind having our students perform other standardized tests, so why not one more? They don't want to have to make the standardized test because it would put them outside their box.
Once reading these articles, I believe that I fall in between the Web Evangelist and the Traditionalist. Am I to the point where I believe that students can learn best by just reading items on the internet...no! However, I do believe that using the web inside a classroom can be extremely beneficial for both the student and the teacher. I am one who owns a smartphone and who texts all the time. I completely agree with the video that speech is much less formal than writing and that as humans we tend to write similarly to how we speak. My favorite quote from the video was that "Texting is fingered speech." I have never thought of it this way....however, it very much is! Thus, I am an individual who falls in the middle of the two extremes of the argument (McWhorter/TedTalks).
References
Karp, J. (2010, January 26). Does Digital Media Make Us Bad Writers? | Spotlight on Digital Media and Learning. Does Digital Media Make Us Bad Writers?. Retrieved May 20, 2014, from http://spotlight.macfound.org/featured-stories/entry/does-digital-media-make-us-bad-writers
Rich, M. (2008, July 26). Literacy Debate: Online, R U Really Reading?. The New York Times. Retrieved May 20, 2014, from http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/27/books/27reading.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
(20142013). TEDTalks : Films Media Group.
I made this observation in my post as well. The point that online text eliminates a great deal of unnecessary information which can be very helpful, especially to students who can't condense information as easily. Glad we agree! Cute pup! I have a black dog myself named Ollie, he is a lab mix and is such a sweetheart. Happy Holiday weekend and keep up the good work!
ReplyDeleteGreat point on the states assessment of what they want the teachers to teach the students but what they actually test the students on. I am from New York State so I don’t know a whole lot about this states standardized testing system. I am more not for standardized tested but I do understand why they are there.
ReplyDeleteThe Smarter Balance test will test a child's ability to read on a computer, arrange the material in their minds, and then answer questions. I think if this is the way state assessments are headed then we are WAY behind. Our school systems are not even equipped for every child to have a computer. I work in a rural high school and I would guess that less than half of the students have Internet at home. The special education students who have 'read test aloud' on the IEP's are now listening to a robotic version of the text and not human. I feel that this will only make the text more confusing. My thoughts are the more technology, the better!
ReplyDeleteThat quote from the Karp article stood out to me too. As an English teacher, sometimes I'd like to challenge the old curmudgeons who think that young folks' writing is inferior to the writing done by the youth in the days of yore. I'd either like to see them write now... or I'd like to see a sample of their writing from when they were 16. I wonder if I'd find superior quality.
ReplyDeleteI am just like you - I guess I was egotistical to think that teachers did not think my generation (Gen X) was not destroying the English language as well. McWhorter really pointed out some great examples over the various periods of time when people believed language was spiraling downwards. I loved the Latin to French quote.
ReplyDeleteYour second comment really stood out to me as I read it as well. In our undergraduate and graduate classes we are being encouraged to utilize technology in the classroom. Especially since our students will need exposure before being released into the world but we don't want to include this in our testing? There are so many contradicting messages in the teaching world.
"State education agencies are promoting that teachers incorporate media into our classrooms more often. However, why are we not testing these skills that the state would like us to incorporate."
ReplyDeleteKeri, this comment you made about teachers being required to incorporate and use technology with students and then not be tested is exactly what I hear from teachers about the use of TechSteps. If you don't know what that is, it is a series of projects that focus on different topics and features of office/the internet. For example, one project is to create a digital story about a person's life in history. We as teachers STRUGGLE to work with the students on these projects because they have no clue about the correct terminology and usage of computers and it is partly because the TechSteps do not hold the students accountable for even their grades. Also, there is no project to show a performance evaluation on standardized testing and teachers in general do not value TechStep projects. Now that I'm off my soapbox, I hope that future changes in education value technology performance assessments and use them to hold the students accountable, since the majority of technology in any form is used at home as well as in school.