The New Literacy

“its not that today’s students can’t write. It’s that they’re doing it in different places and in different ways. This said by, Andrea Lunsford professor at Stanford University. Today in the 21st century there are many new skills, jobs, and way more advanced technology….but writing, what about writing? Texting, social networks, power points. There all still writing too right? Apparently not states John Sutherland an English Professor at a University in England. As he says, “Face book encourages narcissistic blabbering, video and power point have replaced carefully crafted essays, and texting has dehydrated language into bleak, bald, sad shorthand.” Well, from my stance he is wrong and Lunsford is right as, I believe this writing in texting and social networks etc. is still writing just displayed in different ways. In Lunsford’s research about this dilemma I was very shocked that she has taken in 14,672 papers of students writing samples from various natures, and has come up with many conclusions one of which is she says now days more kid are writing than ever and these technologies are reviving our writing not ruining it. Thus I will have to say I disagree because the writing today in social networks for example is off from real words and acronyms are to widely use and are ruining our language. Then again, many students for years and years have been writing ONLY in school just for the point to get a good grade, now that internet has evolved more there are many more kids sites such as Blogger typing about anything!! That may consist of questions or anything about your opinions on situations etc. So as the years continue the internet will evolve and teens writing will evolve as more “practice” will be used not only in school but on the internet and out of sol too.

“machines are using us”

First thing thing that comes to mind after I saw this YouTube video (“the machines are using us” by Michael Wesch) was, refreshing. After hearing different professors (from my own research) saying how internet is destroying writing and how real writing on paper needs to come back and social networking sites need to be EXPUNGED. It’s just refreshing to hear a different stance one like Professor Lunsford’s. The beginning of his video defiantly caught my attention will the whole thing about how writing on paper is unlinear and how typing a paper is linear and you can do such things as hypertext and link. When he went to Google and then created a blog and stated a fact saying 1 blog is created every half second, well this really made me think! Think about who, what, when, where, and WHY? What could this person be writing about what could it be, why are they writing. Well even though many people against internet writing and social networking sites, it still doesn’t be the fact that there are hundreds of blogs per minute and peoples writing is being revived and is recurring more and more out of school and the writing with people is starting to have more of a PURPOSE! Also I very much like what he said about every time we go to a site or forge a link etc. we teach the machine. I can’t say how many times I’ve been on a site let alone the world, trillions of times links or sites have been pulled up. Every day we learn; we are the machine. When he said no longer we are linking text etc. we are linking people... makes me think about which I could be getting info. From or speaking to or even new friends I don’t even know I’m making. Overall, this YouTube video has made me think, discover, process, and Learn...