During the second half of the semester, we focused primarily on our final essay and creative project. I would like to go into greater detail about the process of writing and researching my final essay and creative project and the importance of limiting screen time and writing longhand. Throughout the rest of this course, these strategies and assignments have allowed me to learn new things that I was previously unaware of throughout this process. I have noticed significant growth in my abilities as a writer, reader, and critical thinker. I will be able to apply the essential and valuable skills I have learned in this class throughout the rest of my college career.
When I first began developing and organizing myself in order to start researching the topic I chose, “the negative effects of screentime from Coronavirus,” I was astounded at how there were many newspaper articles, magazines, and web articles of information on this specific topic. I quickly conducted a research paper that I was very passionate about using the data from these articles. Because I was so passionate about this particular subject, I was able to keep writing without stopping which guided me with great success on my paper. From my final essay, “The new digital life has begun to overpower children and adults’ brains. As a result of the pandemic, children and young adults worldwide have changed their in-class learning abilities to a digital screen. This global issue has caused numerous significant problems in the minds of both children and adults. Many people have experienced headaches, exhaustion, and even anxiety in the last two years”, this has made me think more deeply about how there can be many difficult effects on screen time and how even my own life has been affected by this issue. Learning more about these issues has led me to understand better the importance of limiting my screen time and encouraging others to do the same. From Heather Kelly’s newspaper article “With Remote Learning, it’s Now Screen Time All the Time,” I learned ways to limit screen time and the impact of online learning and increased screen time on students of all ages. From this article that I discussed in my final essay, my screen time has been limited significantly.
Allowing myself to learn from this class that there are so many benefits to limiting yourself to screen time, I was able to talk about my own experience and how I can restrict my screen time even as a college student. Putting aside even an hour a day of all technology has brought me to read stories, magazines, newspaper articles and write a lot more than I have before. This new and healthy lifestyle of setting aside technology and all sources of screen time has developed my writing, reading, and critical thinking. Allowing myself to do this has encouraged me to give myself more credit for my academic abilities. Limiting screen time each day has helped me overcome my social anxiety, which I have had for a long time. Leaving behind the technology that my generation has grown up with has allowed me to broaden my horizons and engage in more social interaction. I have begun to feel a lot more comfortable with reading and writing. I have encouraged others to set aside screen time and set the same goals as mine.
Writing my final essay has taught me the importance of writing longhand to start conducting a paper. Writing longhand is much easier for me to keep writing and keep my pen on the piece of paper I am working with. Beginning an essay or any type of assignment on any source of technology is much more complicated than writing traditionally. In writing and producing our creative project, we wrote in our journals longhand. We jotted down ideas and scenarios in our journal about different topics we were asked to write elaborate more on. The various topics and scenarios we wrote in our journals helped us produce our creative project. While writing words down on a piece of paper brought me back to the fifth grade when I was learning cursive writing. This allowed me to conduct a short essay on how I learned cursive writing. Typing on a computer on the screen is much easier to allow yourself to get distracted much easier. With this, you can procrastinate a lot easier, which is not the best idea while writing a five to seven-page paper that requires 1900 words like our research paper did. For my creative project, I wrote about the importance of learning cursive and writing longhand on a piece of paper in the fifth grade and how it helped shape my development as a writer.
I have learned new things about myself throughout the process of writing and researching my final essay and creative project, as well as the importance of limiting screen time and writing longhand. I genuinely have noticed myself improving in my writing, reading, and critical thinking skills while learning the strategies in this class. As a reader, writer, and critical thinker, I will continue to improve my skills.
Work Cited
Kelly, Heather. “With Remote Learning, It’s Now Screen Time All the Time.” Washington Post, 6 Sept. 2020. SIRS Issues Researcher, libproxy.highpoint.edu/login?url=https://explore.proquest.com/sirsissuesresearcher/document/2453819623?accountid=11411. Accessed 15 Nov. 2021.
Duclos, Audrey. “ENG 1103-18: Creative Writing”
“New Literacy” and “Old Literacy”
According to Matt Ritchel’s article, “Blogs vs. Term Papers,” Professor Davidson makes extensive use of the blog and the ethos it symbolizes of public dialogue. To compete with the traditional term paper, can the writing of a blog become more academically rigorous? According to Ritchel, “instead of writing a 500- to 1,500- word term paper every quarter,s students now regularly post essays for public consumption, as well as readings they are studying in class. Blog writing has become a standard requirement for anything from M.B.A to academic courses across the country.”( Matt Ritchel)
As stated in this article by Matt Ritchel, in 2011, the National Survey of Student Engagement revealed that 82 percent of first-year students and more than half of seniors were not assigned to write a single paper of 20 pages or more. Five-page assignments were the most common. In the last ten years, academic writing has been the subject of a global discussion. Nowadays, traditional ways of writing and teaching are referred to by the term “ Old Literacy.” Blogs, tweets, and multimedia posts, including powerpoints, as well as audio essays, are all part of the “New Literacy.” I believe that the new literacy is useful, but it may also be harmful in some aspects.
Students who are visual readers and learners might benefit from learning through PowerPoints. PowerPoints are also helpful for students to review what they missed in a class by rereading and taking notes from them. Students nowadays are considerably more interested in modern literacies, and they like writing for an audience and interacting with it regularly. That feeling of generating one’s work is satisfying and useful for students. When writing a short-term paper, they feel as though they are dragging their feet. A Stanford English Professor, Lunsford, helps her students find their passion for writing. Stanford’s sophomore composition class consisted of one long paper for the whole semester, but now students are required to write a fifteen-page essay on a specific topic in their first few weeks of school.
As Professor Lunsford demonstrates, deciding whether to teach through blog or term papers is a false dichotomy; teachers can use both. A blog may also be well written and thoroughly researched, despite its reputation as a venue for personal babbling. Although some educators worry that informal communication techniques put more pressure on conventional education, others believe the paper is archaic.
Take, for example, professor Davidson, who has anchored a more radical stance for many years, even before the emergence of the blog. When she was teaching at Michigan State in the 1980s, she influenced some colleagues by abandoning the traditional research paper that she calls “ research,” writing that is irrelevant outside of academics.
Typically, writing a “paper” generally involves several different parts that take time and effort. It’s common for blog entries to include nothing more than a summary of the topic. As a result, reading documents becomes simpler. A blog article may be written in a shorter period of time. Although blogs take less time than genuine papers, I believe that writing for what appears to be a longer length in time may be beneficial to young students’ minds. Learning online, such as through blogging, may be beneficial to a variety of students for a variety of reasons. According to the arguments presented in this article, all professors should be able to teach both old and modern literacy without having any issues.
However, I’m becoming increasingly convinced that the novelty value of new web tools is what makes students write better. Blogs, when assigned to students repeatedly and misuse, may quickly turn tedious. The most innovative thing an experienced educator such as Davidson can do, to mandate that students write a five-paraphrasing essay on paper.
This article makes it clear that professors should be able to teach college students both “Old Literacy” and “New Literacy.” On the blog itself, Davidson makes significant use of the blog and the ethos that it represents in public dialogue. According to studies, students at Stanford’s writing programs benefit from knowing how to convey traditional print and digital media. It is so important for students to understand the differences between “Old Literacy” and “New Literacy” to learn effectively. Each professor has a particular style of teaching. But all students learn differently, I believe. Digital learning is the future of education, and it’s the way we learn now.
Work Cited
Richtel, Matt. “Blogs vs. Term Papers.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 20 Jan. 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/22/education/edlife/muscling-in-on-the-term-paper-tradition.html.
Midterm Reflection
While the first few weeks of college were challenging, I believe I have grown as a person and an academic student. Throughout the series and assignments we have covered in this class, articles like “Skim Reading is the New Normal” and “Facebook knows Instagram is Toxic for Teen Girls, Company Documents Show” have stood out to me the most. There are also two techniques, writing longhand and limiting our screen time, that I would like to discuss further because I believe they will be highly beneficial in helping me grow as an academic student, writer, reader, and a critical thinker. Each of these articles appears to be written from a unique point of view. These articles may be all different, but they all make me think the same way. Writing and learning about other individuals’ perspectives on a particular situation has aided my development as a writer during my first few weeks at High Point University.
As I found myself reading the article, “Facebook Knows Instagram is Toxic for Teen Girls, Company Documents Show,” by Jeff Horwitz, Deepa Seetharaman, and Georgia Wells, I was engaged to learn more about the stories and how the issue was resolved. Through the process of reviewing this article, we learn different points of view from individuals with varying stories and experiences. Researchers at Instagram were looking more into the mental health of young teenagers. “Thirtytwo percent of teen girls said that when they felt bad about their bodies, Instagram made them feel worse.”(Horwitz et al.) This article is essential to learn in the college classroom because learning about emotional health in young teenagers, such as our class, is very beneficial. Learning about adolescent mental health is an important topic that everyone should be aware of. This work focuses my mind on learning about this specific topic and avoiding this from happening in the future. Making a new app for children under the age of thirteen is mentioned in one of the topics discussed here. In my opinion, this would be very interesting to watch the app grow over time and see what it will look like in the future.
While examining and learning about the article “Skim Reading is the New Normal,” by Maryanne Wolf, it delves into how the brain today enables the evolution of our most important processes. When our brain skims a sentence, we do not always have time to comprehend what the words are saying; a new literacy for the digital age is required. Wolf claims, “Knowing from research that the reading circuit is not given to human beings through a genetic blueprint like language, but it needs an environment to develop as well.” (Wolf) This article is also essential to read and discuss further because it engages the mind to learn how skimming can prevent me from comprehending the words I’m reading. Reading this article has advised my mind to read more in-depth and not skim read important articles, stories, or assignments I am studying. It gives the opportunity to learn the importance of reading and learning from articles such as this one.
We have limited screen time and must write longhand, both of which have been highlighted in the first few weeks of the semester. These two activities, which we do in class every time we meet, can help students grow academically. Limiting my use of technology in English class helps cleanse my mind and keeps my eyes from staring at a bright screen all day. Writing longhand in class allows my mind to think more deeply than typing on a computer. Writing notes with a pen and paper helps our brain remember things better than typing them out. Writing longhand improves brain function and allows our mind to flow easier. These techniques can help students like my class here at High Point University.
Throughout the first few weeks of my first college semester, learning new things and adapting to new situations can be difficult. Growing as a person and academic scholar has been guided by all of the assignments and features we reviewed during this class. These assignments have genuinely developed me as a writer, reader, and critical thinker. The features of writing longhand and limiting screen time in the classroom aided my writing abilities and development. Through the series of articles such as “ Skim Reading is the New Normal ” and “Facebook knows Instagram is Toxic for Teen Girls, Company Documents Show,” I have advanced my academics by reading and learning different writing skills.
Works Cited
Horowitz, Jeff, Deppa Sethuraman, Georgia Wells. “Facebook Knows Instagram is Toxic for
Teen Girls, Company Documents Show”. Wall Street Journal, Sep 14, 2021. ProQuest,
https:libproxy.highpoint.edu/login?url=https://www-proquest-com
Wolf, Maryanne. “Skim Reading is the New Normal.” The Guardian, 25 Aug. 2018,
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/aug/25/skim-reading-new-normal-
Maryanne-wolf.
Creative Writing
Cursive writing is one way that has transformed me to develop as a writer. I had just started fifth grade at a new school with a strict teacher. I was concerned when she told us about our challenging writing assignments at the start of the year. She assured us that the assignments would be achievable but that we would learn from them and become better writers as a result. Today I am proud to say this has developed me as a writer.
Our three-page paper drafts would have to be written with pen and on paper and rewritten multiple times. Once we finished our drafts, we needed to use a dark black pen to write our assignment all in cursive, and each sentence we wrote had to be approved by her. If we made a mistake, we had to start all over again and throw away that paper when we messed up. My writing skills have improved significantly as a result of this experience. I have grown so much from this experience and have been able to push myself to be better at my writing because I know my teacher would have pushed me to do better.
Anxiety and Headaches
The new digital life has begun to overpower children’s and adults’ brains. As a result of the pandemic, children and young adults worldwide have changed their in-class learning abilities to a digital screen. This global issue has caused numerous significant problems in the minds of both children and adults. Many people have experienced headaches, exhaustion, and even anxiety in the last two years. The transition of many students worldwide to online education has left families feeling powerless to control how much screen time scholars are imposing on their children’s lives. Families used to try to limit their children’s screen time before having to be enrolled in an online school, but they can no longer do so because their children are on the computer screen for more than six hours a day, five days a week.
Heather Kelly of the Washington Post wrote the newspaper article “ With Remote Learning, it’s Now Screen Time All the Time ” to help students and adults find new limits and methods to limit screen time. This article examines the impact of online learning and increased screen time on students. Parents have pressured schools to assist their children, and they are concerned about their children falling behind in their classes due to online learning. “Live or not, and screens, screens are not the center of almost all remorse learning setups. As with everything during the pandemic, the approaches covid change ” (Washington Post). Learning online presents some challenges for students as they learn to navigate new ways to learn. Screen time is not intended to be distributed evenly; some types are preferred over others. Anything that promotes socialization in children, such as facetime with friends or a video conference with a teacher or health care workers, can be beneficial. Activities that engage children are entirely active, such as watching Youtube or somewhat interactive video games. However, adding hours of video conferences occupy six hours a day.
Schools must focus on designing days that provide meaningful interaction for students and meet their social needs. A combination of lessons that deliver information, such as lectures or videos, and activities for engaging in the tasks, such as practicing writing or doing math problems, can help prevent excessive screen time. Then using a tool like Zoom, the teachers can focus on what they taught and interact with the children about that particular topic. Margret Lorentzen, a high school science teacher, has noticed the slight difference in communication between the teacher and student over the video, making teaching more difficult. Such is the lag that can occur when a teacher is talking and the feeling of talking over people in a group discussion. Lorentzen says, “It is twenty to thirty minutes of Zoom time per each eighty-minute class, with up to thirty-three students who do not have to turn their cameras unless they choose to” (Washington Post). Lorentzen, who is used to walking around a classroom and assigning lab experiments, is adjusting to the physical constraints of online learning but is relieved to interact and see her students again.
According to the Washington Post, experts say to talk to your children to make sure they are okay and make any screen time decisions. If video games can help them unwind after a long day of video chatting, it might be good for their mental health. Always keep an eye on your children and ensure that online learning is not too much for them. It is recommended that teachers vary the format of their instruction throughout the day. Parents, for their part, should be understanding if their child becomes restless and needs to get up and move. They should balance their child’s school and recreational screen time with in-person interactions and physical activities.
During the coronavirus pandemic, Brett Molina of the USA today Newspapers wrote an article, “Screen Time out of Control,” about concerns about children’s increased screen time. Coronavirus results in school closings, disrupting after-school; activities and programs. As parents juggled their jobs as their children were being forced into online schooling, they pushed parents to work remotely to relax on screen time rules. The increased screen time on children has concerned many parents, “Before the pandemic, 60% of parents said their children spent no more than three hours a day on devices, found an August survey of U.S. parents by data intelligence firm Morning Consult. As of August, 70% of parents estimated their kids spend at least four hours a day with screens”(USA Today). Parents are not the only ones who want to limit their children’s screen time. Some children appear to be exhausted by their screens as well. Dr. Pam Hurst-Della Pierta, the founder and president of Children and Screens: Institute of Digital Media and Child Dedvolopt, at times when their children are no longer able to see their friends and online learning, is becoming the new normal. Many parents may feel guilty or blamed for allowing their children to spend so much time in front of screens.
This newspaper article offers some suggestions for parents looking for new ways to get their children to take a break from screen time. It suggests that you think in analog terms, ditching devices in favor of more analog activities such as board games and puzzles. Creating new routines can benefit children by ensuring that essential activities are completed before he or she watches television. It will benefit their health and sleep if they put their devices aside at night before bed. Leading by example can demonstrate that new activities are not just for children, make a family bonding night while playing fun board games.
Theresa H. Rogers of USA Today argues in “Parental Screen Time Is Harming Children” that too much screen time by parents is harmful to children. Experts in speech and language development are already seeing the effects on children in a world of competing priorities and limited time, and the results are concerning. While we all know that too much technology is harmful to kids’ brains, parents’ digital habits also play a role. Scrolling may appear harmless, but it could be the new secondhand smoke, endangering children’s health and development in ways we do not fully develop and comprehend. Many teachers report that more children with limited communication and social skills are entering kindergarten. They claim that older children are incapable of dealing with formal social interactions such as ordering a meal at a restaurant.
We can not wait ten or twenty years for the damage to a generation of children to be done with technology, “A child’s communication clock starts ticking on day one, and from then forward, children need quality interactions with their parents and caregivers. Communication skills blossom between the crucial ages of zero and three, and human interaction and conversation are the most effective ways to foster healthy development” (USA Today). Children must see faces and make eye contact to learn to read emotions and engage socially. They need parents who are tuned in to their signals and engage them to communicate. If they learn how to communicate and be prepared for academic success, they will have professional success.
Children’s language development and communication skills are fueled by regular, quality interactions with parents, such as talking, listening, singing, reading, and playing together. Parents must be able to notice and respond to smiles, eye contact, facial expressions, gestures, and emotions in order for their children to get the brain they require. A child’s foundation for communication and social development is weakened with fewer hours of these interactions per day, potentially affecting school readiness and having a ripple effect throughout the child’s life. When parents have buried their phones and are drawn to continuous and significant digital demands and distractions, such as work emails, texts, and phone calls, as well as the twenty-four-hour social media surroundings, they are unable to respond meaningfully.
According to a recent YouGov poll commissioned by the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, “parental technology use is already a problem for the majority of American families”(USA Today). “ 95% say their tech use interferes at least a little with daily opportunities for talking, playing, and interacting with their child without distraction. 82% are at least a little concerned that their use of technology might impact their child’s communication health and development” (USA Today). Half of the parents do not want their children to develop screen time or technology habits, either now or in the future. Technology habits are a ticking “time bomb” that could lead to a population-wide loss of communication abilities and skills on many across the world. In the future, there will be many effects on many children’s brains and social skills due to the consequences of technology. Pediatricians should inquire how technology is being used in a child’s home during their well visit. They should offer tips and tricks on reducing parental tech use in front of their children. Although these conversations may be hard on the parents, they can be more conscious of how much time they spend on their digital devices while their children are nearby, significantly impacting their child’s development over time.
Throughout my research into the impacts of technology and screen time on today’s young children and adults, I have concluded that there needs to be a change in the world by establishing technology boundaries. Younger children have begun to engage in an inappropriate amount of screen time at such a young age due to the Coronavirus Pandemic. Young children’s ability to read faces and learn social skills is most definitely affected and can risk their early development. Face-to-face interactions are the only way for young children to learn to recognize and interpret facial expressions. Obesity, sleep problems, neck and back problems, depression, anxiety, and lower academic scores in children and young adults can all be linked to excessive amounts of technology and screen time. Parents should limit children’s time in front of their screens to an hour or two a day. Adults can be recommended to limit their screen time outside of their work hours as well.
We learned how to limit screen time in the classroom to improve our writing on paper and socialize as a group during this course. Taking a break from my computer has taught me to schedule time in my day to read a book, draw in a notebook, or even free-write. I have learned many new exciting things that I did not know before limiting my own screen time. Understanding the importance of limiting your time spent with technology to a couple of hours per day has numerous benefits. Social development and social skills are critical at a young age, which can be pushed by limiting children’s time on technology and even televisions. Socializing and interacting with other children and adults will allow their minds to explore more things and learn how to share, set boundaries, and solve problems all by themselves.
Works Cited
Kelly, Heather. “With Remote Learning, It’s Now Screen Time All the Time.” Washington Post, 6 Sept. 2020. SIRS Issues Researcher, libproxy.highpoint.edu/login?url=https://explore.proquest.com/sirsissuesresearcher/document/2453819623?accountid=11411. Accessed 15 Nov. 2021.
Molina, Brett. “Screen Time Out of Control?” Usa Today, 15 Feb. 2021. SIRS Issues Researcher, libproxy.highpoint.edu/login?url=https://explore.proquest.com/sirsissuesresearcher/document/2496488198?accountid=11411. Accessed 15 Nov. 2021. Rodgers, Theresa H. “Parental Screen Time Is Harming Children.” Usa Today, 20 Jan. 2020. SIRS Issues Researcher, libproxy.highpoint.edu/login?url=https://explore.proquest.com/sirsissuesresearcher/document/2343329264?accountid=11411. Accessed 15 Nov. 2021.
Audrey's Blog 