Unit 1 Draft

 

        Source #1:  Molly Young "A pencil shop, For Texting the Old Fashioned way way." The New York Times (2015)

   This article covers the importance of a simple pencil. The author reacts firsthand to a new store opening in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. This tiny, Instagram-worthy store only sells pencils and notebooks. But not just any pencils, these are all different types of pencils from all over the world, including Japan, Germany, France, the Czech Republic, and Tennessee.

  The author is highlighting the fact that a lot of people find value in stable, good old-fashioned pencils. Especially nowadays, with the rise in iPads and computers, People rarely type anymore. It's also interesting to note that the atmosphere of the shop was also heavily discussed. Including the checkered floor and the bright colors of the tiny store, as well as the nice, knowledgeable women who worked there. 

  The audience for this store is quite specific. This store is for the real writers, creatives who do not want to stare at a screen all day. These people care about how it used to be before technology took over. It's also very appealing to simply buy a pencil from a store that sells unique and high-quality pencils for very cheaply. (Cost from 2$-12$) Heck, I would get one! 

  I believe the author succeeded in getting people who would be interested to make their way to the Lower East Side. Although you can make the argument that most people would not be interested in such a thing, the author did her job. 

“Her store is the size of a juice box, with a checkered floor and jars of yellow button chrysanthemums sprinkled around. With its spanking newness and luminous blocks of color, the place looks like an Edward Hopper canvas. (Or, as the website Racked put it: “This Fancy Pencil Store Is Begging to Be Instagrammed.”). (Young 2015) - Clear the author as well as the store owners are trying to reel in a very specific group of people to come to this store. 

“Pencils are displayed upright in glass jars labeled with their origin: Japan, Germany, France, the Czech Republic, Tennessee. Framed vintage advertisements on the wall depict the likes of Booth Tarkington shilling his favorite pencils.” - (Young 2015) This is going to get a very different kind of demographic interested.

       Source #2  Michelle Faverio and Olivia Sidoti: Pew Research Teens' Social Media Writing

  This article highlights the scary realities of teens and their screen/Social media addictions.  (Written by Michelle Faverio and Olivia Sidoti, 2024.) The authors cover many different social media apps such as TikTok, Instagram, Youtube and Facebook, and compare the usage of the apps with different demographics. 

  

Overall, YouTube was the most popular amongst all the demographics of teens being studied, with 73% saying they go on YouTube daily. This includes a 15% margen where these teens are saying they are on YouTube "almost constantly." This does not surprise me because I believe that YouTube is the broadest of all the social media apps being observed. Not to mention, YouTube is the oldest. 

   

  The article went further into observation when they broke all the teens down into different demographics. The authors explored Race, Gender, Household Income, and Age. It is interesting to me that Facebook was used by people from a prodomenantly lower income Household, yet Instagram and TikTok seemed to be used more from prodomenently older kids, and the income of the household played less of a factor. 

  Alls to say that this authors propuse for writing this article is to bring awareness to the fact that social media addiction is getting out of hand, and although this is not new information, having numbers with real statistics helps us understand the magnitude of this addiction for most of the young teens in America. This helps support my topic on writing and technology because to understand how writing is being affected by technology, you first have to understand the core issue of social media addiction amoung our teenagers in America. 

"YouTube tops the list of the online platforms we asked about in our survey. Nine-in-ten teens report using the site, slightly down from 95% in 2022.TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat remain widely used among teens. Roughly six-in-ten teens say they use TikTok and Instagram, and 55% say the same for Snapchat." -  (Michelle Faverio and Olivia Sidoti, 2024.)

"As was true in prior studies, Facebook remains more commonly used among teens in lower-income households. For example, 45% of teens in households earning less than $30,000 a year say they use Facebook. This drops to 35% among teens in households earning $30,000 to $74,999 a year and 29% among teens with household incomes of $75,000 or more. Teens in lower-income households are more likely than those in the highest-income households to say they use TikTok (73% vs. 59%). "  -  (Michelle Faverio and Olivia Sidoti, 2024.)

      Source #3  Joy Robinson: Teaching with Digital Tools in the Writing and Communications Classroom

 

 This article touches on how teachers and students use technology as part of learning writing and communication skills. Acknowledging that social media/the internet as a whole has greatly impacted our whole society, and how educators working with students are able to use that to their advantage.   

  Its interetsing to hear the author discuss how, for the first time, educators are young enough to have had internet access their whole life. So now that they are teaching, there are ways they can easily incorporate new, helpful ideas into the classroom to have technology work in their favor. But, what happens to the teachers who didn't grow up with the internet are a tiny computer in their pockets since they were 13.

  

 Well, in this article, the researchers surveyed 328 writing and communication teachers to find what kinds of digital tools they use (like learning platforms, apps, software, etc.).  As we implemented more technology into schools over time, Teachers were expected to keep up. Within the fast-paced advancements in technology, teachers were not able to have proper training and were expected to just figure it out.  This led to teachers using only what they were familiar with, which may not have been the most beneficial for the teacher or the students. 

  This article suggests that we need improvements in training for teachers, a shared repository of digital teaching resources, and the inclusion of teachers in decisions about choosing educational tools. If we want the best for our students and the future leaders of the world, we need to take time to help out our educators. It is not their job to personally have to keep up with the lastest but of technology to help our students learn; it is up to the higher-ups in the educational field to implement proper training for our teachers who already give so much of themselves to their work. 

"Digital resources have become ubiquitous. By 2017, for example, 77% of Americans owned smartphones (Pew Research Center, 2018), and Facebook had over 2 billion monthly users (“Top 20 Facebook Statistics - Updated April 2017,” 2017Top 20 Facebook Statistics — Updated April, 2017“Top 20 Facebook Statistics - Updated April 2017,” 2017). (Joy Robinson)

"Our study finds that over one-third of teachers either teach themselves or use their own knowledge to support their digital pedagogy; learning management systems are used overwhelmingly to distribute materials; teachers perform a range of teaching tasks with both digital and non-digital tools; and teachers often depend on familiar, commonly available resources to perform teacher and learner actions." ( Joy Robinson) 

  Source #4  Zoe Keller - CHATGPT on campus: Assessing its effects on college writing and teaching

   This interview was conducted by Zoe Keller with Alfred Guy,  a Yale University writing teacher and academic who helps students develop writing skills and has been honored for his teaching.  He discusses a lot about using AI in an academic setting, especially when it comes to writing. 

His main claim is that this ChatGPT is going to just get smarter and smarter, mind you this was written in 2023, which is why I chose it. Its fasinanting to see how people reacted to chat when it first came out and what they predicted would happen. Guy was 100% accurate.

   What I found so fascinating about his take on being a writing professor with the use of AI is that he was completely transparent in the fact that, yes, in 2023, he can tell what's AI and what's not. But he predicted that in the near future (Now), that its going to be unable to detect. Which is not necessarily true. But as the years have gone by, Chat has advanced more and more. My friend and I recently figured out this new feature with ChatGPT, where you are able to press on a microphone and have a full-blown conversation. The most fascinating part is that the voice of chat is super realistic! Having "Ums" and "Likes" as well as a very casual tone, as if you were talking to a friend. 

 Guy argued that as ChatGPT becomes more advanced, it's going to be more of "How do we know get students to choose to learn and do the work?" he said that comes from the teachers knowing their audience and choosing material that the students will feel benefits them in the future and gets them excited to learn. 

"We know that students are less likely to cheat when they are pursuing questions they feel connected to; understand how the assignment will support their longer-term learning goals; have produced preliminary work before the deadline; and have discussed their preliminary work with others. Getting a head start on the paper and feeling connected to it through conversation are two ways that students can stay motivated for the hard work of writing." (Alfred Guy)

 Some of the best assignments I’ve seen using the tool so far have asked students to review

ChatGPT’s answers to questions that the students are researching, separating out things that sound likely from things that are actually true. Practicing this skill was valuable before ChatGPT” - (Alfred Guy)