Thompson, C. (2009, August 25). Clive Thompson on the New Literacy. Wired Magazine, 17, Retrieved February 28, 2010, from http://www.shannoncarter-blog.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/Clive-Thompson-on-the-New-Literacy.pdf

Several professors and teachers believe that the quality of students writing is on the decline because of new technologies such as Facebook and text messaging. However, the study being done by Andrea Lunsford at Stanford University argues otherwise. Lunsford has collected 14,627 writing samples from students at Stanford between the years of 2001-2006. After her extensive research Lunsford argues,"I think we're in the midst of a literacy revolution the likes of which we haven't seen since Greek civilization." She goes on the explain that students are writing so much more these days through the use of blogging, Facebook, Twitter, mobile phones and other technologies. The extensive use of these technologies helps improve students writing, not hinder it. The online world of writing allows students to write in a different context than they had 50 years ago. Students today almost always write for an audience which is a remarkable change and is one aspect of becoming a great writer. She also agrees that good teaching is crucial for students to improve their writing skills but these technologies have had a positive effect on student writing. She believes new technologies are, "Pushing our literacy in bold new directions."

Post number three

Before entering college have you written research papers like Shirely, in Kantz's article "Helping Students Use Textual Sources persuasively," in which you re-presented the research in your own words and gotten decent grades? What are your experiences now in college?

In middle school and high school we wrote at least one research paper every year. However, the papers were more geared towards the process of finding the information using the available resources than the actual final product. I always remember my teachers stressing the amount of sources we needed to get an A and we would get points on the notes we took on index cards before writing the actual paper. I can see that this was helpful in some ways because we really needed to do thorough research in order to get the desired grade. But it was also a problem because the final product and the amount of extra information not found in the research was not a large contribution to our final grade. In all of the research papers I have done prior to JMU I simply wrote my findings in a organized fashion with citations and got very good grades. Like Shirely I added little to know analysis of he information. When I came to college and took Gwrit we had to write a research paper and this is when I first realized I needed to change the way I wrote research papers. Like Shirely I was shocked when I received a C on a paper I thought I would get an A on. I am glad I had that experience early in my college experience because it taught me a lot about research papers that I had not learned from high school. I have had to write several research papers since for my history classes and have done well on them because I did not just regurgitate my research, I applied the research and formulated original arguments. I think high school teachers need to start to introduce this process sooner and not focus all the attention on research papers just on the research aspect itself.