Joshua Rood's List: Technology Hurting Literacy

• What gains U.S. students posted in recent years are "hardly remarkable by world standards," according to the report. Although the U.S. is not one of the nine countries that lost academic ground for the 14-year period between 1995 and 2009, more countries were improving at a rate significantly faster than that of the U.S. Researchers looked at data for 49 countries.

    

  The study's findings echo years of rankings that show foreign students outpacing their American peers academically. Students in Shanghai who recently took international exams for the first time outscored every other school system in the world. In the same test, American students ranked 25th in math, 17th in science and 14th in reading.

    

  A 2009 study found that U.S. students ranked 25th among 34 countries in math and science, behind nations like China, Singapore, South Korea, Hong Kong and Finland. Figures like these have groups like StudentsFirst, headed by former D.C. schools chancellor Michelle Rhee, concerned and calling for reforms to "our education system [that] can't compete with the rest of the world."

    

  Just 6 percent of U.S. students performed at the advanced level on an international exam administered in 56 countries in 2006. That proportion is lower than those achieved by students in 30 other countries. American students' low performance and slow progress in math could also threaten the country's economic growth, experts have said.

• The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) defines literacy as the "ability to identify, understand, interpret, create, communicate and compute, using printed and written materials associated with varying contexts. Literacy involves a continuum of learning in enabling individuals to achieve their goals, to develop their knowledge and potential, and to participate fully in their community and wider society."^[3]

• But it is critical to note Wenglinsky's caveat to this conclusion. He argues that not all uses of technology were beneficial. Wenglinksky found using computers to teach low order thinking skills, "...[W]as negatively related to academic achievement…." Put another way, this type of computer use was worse than doing nothing.

• That does not mean all is well for literacy and communication in the future. It isn’t clear whether all children are comfortable shifting from one form of written communication to another.

  A lack of opportunity to develop in multiple language modes could cause language to develop in one way among one group and make those kids unable to communicate with those who have developed multiple literacies.

  “Which kids are texting, when, and how?” asks Bertram Bruce, author of Literacy in the Information Age. “Are the same ones reading Lemony Snicket books? Do they read in the same or in new ways?”

  “Linguistic class divisions are growing in the U.S.,” says Bruce. “My sense is that young people show enormous potential for creativity–just look at YouTube, graffiti, new music, and so on. At the same time, society tramples that creativity for the many oppressed by poverty and racism, and for the young people who have their lives defined by consumerism and mass production.”

  Ironically, the problem may be prevented not by closing the digital divide by ensuring access to text technologies but by providing access to more traditional forms of literacy, like books

• Dorlea Rikard, Florence High School language teacher, said she understands texting is part of student life, but to excuse bad writing by saying it's just how their world is now "is ignoring the fact that formal communication is still important and necessary."

     

  She teaches 11th-graders in advanced placement language and composition class and said students often have handwritten assignments. Many struggle with the formal writing process, she said.

     

  "They slip into the informal voice often, and that's really a tightrope because you want them to find their own voice, but the writing must be appropriate," she said. "I've realized they very often write the way they speak and they speak the way they text. And yes, I've had a few students turn in papers with numbers instead of words and letters used inappropriately. It's definitely the texting influence."

• Florence High School senior McKay Cleveland said she doesn't text so often that it has affected her writing, but she knows plenty of students who are well versed in text lingo. And, the language makes its way into school writing assignments.

     

  "I work at the school's writing center and I would suspect that some of the mistakes I see in writing assignments are text related," Cleveland said. "Mrs. Rikard constantly tells us not to use acronyms and common phrases in our formal writing. It's important to know how to write correctly."

• Billy Ray Warren, secondary curriculum director for Florence schools, said texting has definitely contributed to the decline in writing skills. And there's another issue that concerns him as well: a lack of cursive writing ability.

     

  Keyboarding, in general, whether at the computer or on a cell phone, is a definite culprit in the lack of cursive writing skills among high school students, Warren said.

     

  "Cursive writing is always going to be a needed skill," he said. "The argument by those who've done away with it say it's an art form, not needed in everyday life. I would dispute that because there are jobs such as (postal carriers) whereby people have got to be able to read cursive."

• Jennifer Scott, a 10th-grade Lauderdale County home-schooled student, said she texts constantly. She also has plenty of school writing assignments. She admits she gets lazy from time to time and allows text talk to enter her school writing.

     

  "I might use the number 2 instead of spelling out "to", or for the word "into" I might write n2," she said. "But I don't use slang terms like LOL or BTW (by the way). My mom would definitely not appreciate that."

     

  Scott said text language is strictly for fun and most teens view it as such.

     

  "It's just a matter of common sense when it comes to writing a paper for school," she said. "Most people are aware of the difference in texting with slang and writing for real."

2 more annotations...

• Middle school students who frequently use “tech-speak”—omitting letters to shorten words and using homophone symbols, such as @ for “at” or 2nite for “tonight”—performed worse on a test of basic grammar, according to a new study in New Media & Society.

   

  Drew P. Cingel, a doctoral candidate in media, technology, and society at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., conducted the experiment when he was an undergraduate with the Media Effects Research Laboratory at Penn State University in University Park, Pa. under director S. Shyam Sundar. The researchers surveyed 228 6th, 7th, and 8th graders in central Pennsylvania on their daily habits, including the number of texts they sent and received, their attitudes about texting, and their other activities during the day, such as watching television or reading for pleasure. The researchers then assessed the students using 22 questions adapted from a 9th-grade grammar test to include only topics taught by 6th grade, including verb/noun agreement, use of correct tense, homophones, possessives, apostrophes, comma usage, punctuation, and capitalization.

   

  Mr. Cingel, who published the study while at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, N.C., and Mr. Sundar found that the more often students sent text messages using text-speak (shortened words and homophones), the worse their grammar—a concern as 13- to 17-year-olds send more than twice the number of text messages each month than any other age group.

   

  Moreover, the more often a student received text messages using tech-speak, the more likely he or she was to send messages using that language. There was no gender difference after accounting for the amount of texting each student did, though teenage girls have been found in other studies to send and receive nearly twice as many messages per month as boys do: 4,050 texts on average, compared with 2,539….
• “People get creative in terms of trying to express a lot. The economy of expression forces us to take shortcuts with our expression. We know people are texting in a hurry, they are on mobile devices, and so they are making these compromises,” Mr. Sundar said. “It’s not surprising that grammar is taking a back seat in that context. What is worrisome is it somehow seems to transfer over to their offline grammar skills. They are not code-switching offline.”

• “I think it makes sense for these social conversations to be lightweight or light-hearted in terms of the syntax,” said President of Dictionary.com Shravan Goli. “But ultimately, in the world of business and in the world they will live in, in terms of their jobs and professional lives, students will need good, solid reading and writing skills. I’m a little worried about where we are in America with literacy levels dropping. Are these [electronic devices] helping us, or making it worse? I think they may be going the other way and making it worse.”

• One only has to spend about two minutes browsing the public pages of a social media platform like Facebook to find examples of cyber slang. In some cases, a second and third read is required before a sentence begins to make sense. A public Facebook page entitled “If you think the rules at UnionCounty High School are ridiculous,” dealing with school policies in Union, S.C. offers these examples:

   

    “the new policy on dress code they handed out last week is our last chance 2 keep us out of uniforms. the new super intendant as u all know is from spartanburg is using the saturday school crap 2 take a note on how many offenses we have & will use it 2 make her decision. so we ned 2 stop breaking the dress code or we might have 2 really fight uniforms next year.”

   

    “dont worry abt us wearing uniforms nxt year. our parents wont buy them & the district cant even give us the first set cuz our parents pay the taxes & we cant afford them. so get ur parents opinion & make them disagress with uniforms!”