ICWA 8-30-2011

I think my family is pretty good at limiting our technology. There is not much of a generation gap between my dad and I but there is a small one between my mom and I. My dad is a business man so he is glued to his blackberry a lot with business calls and emails and can even teach me a few things about technology. My mom still hasn't completely figured out her phone but she is on her email at least 2 hours a day. Often times she needs me to help her with her computer or phone but she is pretty good with technology. I would say I probably use technology the most as far as my phone, facebook, twitter and so on but tend to do a pretty good job of knowing when enough is enough. I also have 3 younger siblings. Regan is 14 and does not use too much technology. She is on facebook a lot and does have a cell phone but other than that she does not use too much. Gracen is 10 and just recently got a cell phone so she is still trying to figure it out. I think the biggest jump is in my brother though. Because of my two sisters and I, he got started using technology at a much younger age. My brother is 7 and already knows how to play games on the computer, work the xbox and wii, set up the DVD player, and can work our guide on the TV. I think the thing that my family is the worst with is the TV. I would say the TV would be on for atleast 5-6 hours a day even if no one is watching it.

SWA #2

When Richtel says that technology is rewiring our brains he is referring to the way we take information. The technology that we are using is making us process so much information in such a short time that we don’t often pay attention to most of it but just skim over it or summarize it. A lot of time people are not even able to retain the information they had just got done reading because of this.
Richtel uses the example of the Campbell family and how it affects their whole family atmosphere. Many people are addicted to technology as we see with Mr. Campbell that they can’t seem to get away from it. Technology strains relationships as we tend to not pay attention to those that we love but instead to our phones and applications. Richtel shows us this example with the Campbell’s vacations. Mr. Campbell tends to be distracted from family time as he is instead constantly on his phone or computer.
Richtel also shows us how it is being passed down to Mr. Campbell’s son Connor. Connor is a very bright kid yet has trouble focusing on homework or reading, this lack of focus lead to him receiving a C with his grades. Connor admits that the reason he is struggling to focus is because he has a voice in his head that tells him he needs to check his Facebook or Reddit. I can relate with Connor because I sometimes find myself falling into this same temptation of being the process of doing my homework and having a sudden feeling that I need to check my Facebook or Twitter.
This is what Richtel is trying to do for his readers make them realize that the same problems that the Campbell family was facing are the same things that are going on in our lives. Through this connection people can relate to the Campbell family and see that maybe they too need to change their lifestyle of being addicted to technology. Richtel through the Campbell’s experience is trying to scare his readers into them not wanting to become like them.
The myth of multitasking was disproved according to Ritchel through the tests that were performed at Stanford where multi-taskers were actually beaten at what they prided themselves in most, multitasking! When asked to remember whether red rectangles had moved they were not able to do so as the blue rectangles that were added distracted their thoughts. What the studies showed were that the people who claimed that they were good multi-taskers could not focus on the simple task of deciding whether or not the rectangles had moved.
I do agree with Ritchel’s argument that technology is lessening our ability to focus on one task at a time. I see this happening with myself often where it is hard for me to focus on reading an article without having the need of checking my phone or facebook. I am still able to control it as I try to limit the distractions by turning my phone off or turning my computer off while I am trying to do something. By limiting these distractions it makes it much easier for me to focus on my tasks and get them complete.

Get Smarter

I wanted to respond to Cascio's point about the performance enhancing drugs. I found this question on page 40 question 3. Cascio says "From the perspective of a culture immersed in athletic doping wars, the use of such drugs may seem like cheating. From the perspective of those who find that they're much more productive using this form of enhancement, it's no more cheating than getting a faster computer or a better education." I disagree with Casico because these performance drugs are illegal. People who use these drugs are more like a person who would plagiarize or take credit for something that they did not have to work to acquire. Because the drugs are illegal, just like plagiarizing is illegal, they give you an unfair advantage without having to do much work.

Tuesday, August 23rd, 2011

The thing that stuck out to me the most about our reading from the Argument: an Introduction, had to be the point they made that argument's do not necessarily mean fighting. Whenever someone says they got in an argument, it means they were mad at someone over a particular thing. I never really thought about and argument being healthy. But now that I have seen that the true definition of an argument is not a fight it has changed my perspective!

SWA #1

When asked to reflect on my best and worst writing experiences, I knew exactly which writing experience was my best. In the 9^th grade, my English teacher asked our class to write about any fictional story we chose. She told us we could write about sports, a mystery, superheroes, or anything else that we found interesting. My choice was easy. As a young kid I always loved super heroes. I grew up watching the marvel super heroes and Batman was always my favorite. So I took the fictional story idea and I ran with it. My story was about an average guy named Grant. Grant was tired of his somewhat boring and common every day life and wanted to change it to make a difference in the world. Grant was fairly wealthy as he owned all of the Subways on the east coast. He decided he would use the money he earned growing his Subway franchises to help fight crime. Because he did not possess any supernatural powers, he invented his own by creating glasses with laser and x-ray vision. He was also able to invent shoes that allowed him to run speeds of up to 70 mph, and he also invented a shirt that allowed him to fly anywhere. He called himself the Green Captain. One of his biggest fears was that America was becoming too fat. So, when Rico’s Tacos moved into town selling their greasy unhealthy tacos, the Green Captain felt he had to take care of the situation to save his town from their unhealthy ways. This was my favorite writing experience because I enjoyed fictional characters, particularly super heroes. In this case, I was able to make up my own superhero and use my imagination and creativity to develop a story that was unusual and out of the ordinary. I enjoyed creating a character that had the ability to do things outside of the normal realm of possibility. The paper was easy to write because of the enjoyment I had writing the paper. And even though when I first got the assignment and I thought 2000 words was going to be a lot to write, I ended up going over the word count and had to cut back on my paper to fit the word limit. The story came easy because it was about something that I enjoyed and enabled me to use my imagination and creativity. I found it to be a fun and exciting exercise.

My worst writing experience would have to be a paper I had to write in order to graduate from the International Baccalaureate program at Garner High School. The paper was for my Theory of Knowledge (ToK) class. Each student was given a topic to argue in a written essay. The topic I was given was, “How important the opinions of experts are in the search for knowledge?” I struggled from the beginning with this topic because it was not interesting. It was hard for me to connect to the exercise and to get excited about it like I was the fictional story I previously wrote about above. The paper also had to be 4000 words and at times while writing the paper I struggled to important things to include in the paper. When you do this you’ll find that the paper ends up not making sense, which mine didn’t make any sense whatsoever. So, I had to go back and edit the paper multiple times which made me disconnect from the paper even more. Looking back on the paper, I know that overall it was a positive experience because I had to force myself to stay focused on it. It really made me do the appropriate research and think about the topic I was writing about. After doing research, I concluded that the opinions of experts ultimately are only important up to a certain point. Their opinions are good to start ideas, but we as individuals must form our own opinions based off of our own research and our own finding for it to be valid to us.

I would have to say the paper that influenced me more was the ToK paper. The superhero story was more just for fun and to get us excited about writing. It really did not teach me much as far as how to format a paper correctly and do research to prove a particular point or position I was taking. The ToK paper was my first paper where I really had to do exstensive research and put forth a lot of work in order to complete it. The paper required me to do the necessary research on what I thought might be the answer to the questions and in the end my research actually changed my opinion. This paper I think will influence my future work. It was a learning experience that taught me that through research one can learn how to develop opinions and to be able to write a proper view on it.