The spread of technology and access to the Internet provides endless opportunities to a great number of people. People who have online access have the ability to better themselves through learning, developing new skills, and many other positive activities. Yet those who do not have access to the Internet are increasingly at a disadvantage. Author and blogger Katrina Schwartz discusses the necessity of extending Internet access to all people in her article “Internet Access for All: A New Program Targets Low-Income Students.”

Though access to technology can be incredibly beneficial, especially for schools and students, it can also be costly. Low-income schools suffer from the inability to provide new technology for students and training for teachers on new ways to teach using technology. Additionally, as schools shift towards the inclusion of technology in the classroom, students who do not have online access at home are more likely to fall behind. Not only do schools demand more interaction with online tools and devices, but the workplace is requiring more of its employees to use technology in their daily work. Thus students who do not encounter these technologies from an early age will struggle more as they finish school and seek employment. Nonprofit group Connect2Compete hopes to reverse this trend with its EveryoneOn campaign.

Connect2Compete Logo

Offering low-cost technology and Internet access, Connect2Compete hopes to provide low-income families with the opportunities that they lack without an Internet connection. The nonprofit cites the statistic that 100 million people in America have no broadband connection, while 62 million Americans do not use the Internet. Low-income families with students in elementary or high school will be eligible to receive a free router and unlimited Internet service for less than $10 every month. These are families that qualify for free or reduced lunches. People with no children will also be offered Internet acces for a similarly low cost. In the United States we understand education to be an opportunity open to everyone. Connect2Compete argues that Internet access should have a similar status in the U.S.

This program and the nonprofit aim to eliminate the cost barrier of low-income families to technology and online access. Students and adults alike will greatly benefit from easier access to both technology and web-based learning. This type of access will be essential for students in the future and will reduce the disadvantage that previously existed. Access to the Internet can also be helpful for those seeking employment, offering tools for the job search and for increasing online literacy. As society shifts toward welcoming more technology, we must work to reduce the disadvantage of those who do not have access to it. Following the example of organizations like Connect2Compete, we must remember that ability to use the Internet, just like education, is a right we all must share.

The classroom is one of the few places left that has yet to fully embrace technological innovation. It seems that schools and classrooms are slower than other areas of society to introduce new technologies into daily activities. Yet schools around the world have begun to adapt to the use of one type of new technology: tablets. Blogger Thomas Gibbs, in his article “Changing Education: Why Tablets Are Becoming the New Textbook,” discusses the spread of tablet use in schools across the nation. Tablets have begun to make their way into students’ hands throughout the United States, for the benefit of both the schools and the students themselves.

Students of all ages can benefit from tablet use in the classroom.

Tablets offer a variety of practical uses and ways to make a student’s work at school much more efficient and convenient. These devices have an almost endless amount of uses; they can be notepads, research tools, organizational tools, and most importantly, textbooks. The use of a tablet as a textbook has the potential to change the face of education at universities. With the skyrocketing costs of textbooks in the United States, it is no surprise that many students see tablets overtaking the role of print textbooks. Gibbs cites a study by the Pearson Foundation, which found that 63% of students see tablets replacing textbooks in five years. Yet tablets pose certain issues to schools seeking to integrate them into daily curriculum.

58% of college students prefer digital reading over print reading in the classroom, according to the Pearson Foundation.

A main obstacle for schools is the cost of the average tablet. It is difficult for schools to provide tablets to students due to their high cost. As a result, most schools have not been able to bring tablets to the majority of students. Instead, schools have begun to encourage individual students who do have access to tablets to bring them to class. This strategy may even prove to be cost-effective; e-textbooks often are cheaper than their print counterparts, and greatly reduce the cost of textbooks over the course of a four-year education. This strategy may end up saving the student as much or more than the cost of the original tablet. Currently, however, only students who can afford the cost of tablets receive their benefits.

I fully welcome the introduction of tablets into daily learning in the classroom. They can provide valuable experiences for students at any grade level. Tablets promote greater interaction and engagement from students, and they appeal to the different styles of learning that students may have. Additionally, the potential shift towards e-textbooks and away from print can prove to be beneficial to college students. This method of cutting costs will be positive for more students seeking a less costly college experience. The shift towards tablets and away from traditional education strategies is one that I, along with many other students, look forward to in the future.

There are countless ways in which the rising use of digital media is changing society. One of those ways, as introduced by the National Writing Project (NWP) in the article “What Is Digital Writing and Why Does It Matter?”, is by introducing people to multiple literacies. Multiple literacies consist of how people encounter and interact with text and information of all kinds; visual, print, digital, and sound are just a few of those types. The NWP’s article explains the impact and challenges of multiple literacies on young students.

The National Writing Project’s new book, “Because Digital Writing Matters”

Young people face a variety of mediums of text and information on a daily basis. Students now use tools to create and share text, and writing, that are outpacing what they learn in schools. The NWP, with its new book titled Because Digital Writing Matters, are urging schools to reevaluate their teaching methods to better cultivate these multiple literacies. Schools must especially enhance students’ capabilities for digital writing. Digital writing is not a simple skill, it is “a means of interfacing with ideas and with the world, a mode of thinking and expressing in all grades and disciplines.” Thus developing this capability is crucial for schools and teachers. Because digital writing can affect how students encounter the world, and can boost their performance in other areas, the NWP is calling on teachers, schools and policymakers to update their curriculums.

The goal of schools, policymakers, and community members must be to promote curriculums that incorporate learning through technology and that provide plenty of opportunities for digital writing. Schools must move past traditional, and outdated, teaching strategies, and must include a diversified set of tools and systems for teaching. Because students will encounter a multitude of text and information out of the classroom, schools must foster students’ abilities to comprehend them. Because Digital Writing Matters offers examples of teachers at the forefront of this shift, who use digital writing tools in classrooms. These exercises provide meaningful learning experiences for students, and may even be more enjoyable for the students engaging in them.

I strongly agree that schools, educators and policymakers must keep up with society’s technological advancements. Schools have a distinct opportunity to prepare their students for the challenges they will face when needing to use these new technologies. As digital writing takes a more influential stance in society, students everywhere will use their multiple literacies to create and share content. Schools are the perfect place for students to become familiar with, and proficient in, the technologies necessary for digital writing.

Source: theagencycreative.co.uk

It is easy for us to view the field of digital media and literature as antagonistic to traditional print media. We assume that print media cannot exist simultaneously with digital media, and the development of the latter will continue the decline of the former. Yet Dr. Ruth Page, in “Stories of the Self on and off Screen” argues that we must view digital and traditional mediums as being able to coexist. Additionally, we must be able to appreciate the inherent benefits of each, and the potential that digital media has for the future.

In her article, Dr. Page focuses on the concept of the narrative. Particularly, she encourages us to consider the potential benefits of electronic publications for this field of writing. Electronic narratives allow for unique and creative types of narrative expression. Digital writing lends new capabilities that print cannot; adding images, links or even sound to a narrative is often as simple as writing words on a webpage. These new capabilities also lead to different types of interaction from readers. Hyperlinks within pages can send readers to explore new sites related to the narrative, and learn new supplementary information. Because of these capabilities, Dr. Page argues that we must consider the benefits of digital writing just as we would print. The existence of one should not negate or prevent the study of the other.

“As we embrace the potential of electronic literature in the classroom and beyond, we must do so in a manner that respects distinctive features of medium, mode and genre but avoids binary contrast between online and offline forms as if they were unified and monolithic categories.” – Dr. Ruth Page

Rather than shy away from digital writing, I also argue that we must consider and embrace the benefits of the field. Though it has already developed more than many can imagine, the medium still has incredible potential. And the rise of digital media has made literary study more intriguing, not less. Comparing digital and print media makes clearer certain unique aspects of both. Though digital media allows for more creativity through the addition of links, images and sound, print media allows for a more unified narrative experience not interrupted by outside information. Rather than detracting from the appeal of print media, electronic publication enhances the characteristics with which we’re already familiar. The benefit of electronic media, especially clear when compared to print, is its capability for multimedia creativity and expression. The two can coexist, and they serve to enhance the benefits of each other, rather than antagonize them.

To parents seeking to shape their children and to adults seeking professional success, video games signify the demise of productivity. We see video games, more than any form of popular entertainment – including movies and TV – as obstacles to achievement and as good-for-nothing ways to spend time. Yet video games have now been around long enough, and have become complex enough, to put forth challenges that spark thinking and that encourage users to engage in problem-solving and other useful tasks. And as Ian Bogost argues in “The Rhetoric of Video Games,” these games have adopted a rhetorical style of their own. These developments may certainly come as a shock to careful parents, and might cause a surge of excitement in fun-seeking kids and adults.

Video games, much like the computers that have allowed for their creation, stem from a simple input and output system. Writing a line of code will produce a specific response in its host device; pressing a button on a controller will elicit a response from an on-screen character. This cause and effect relationship had simple beginnings in computer programming and video games, but both have evolved tremendously since their inception decades ago. This evolution has brought video games to vastly expand what Bogost calls their “possibility space.” The possibility space of a video game is the parameters in which the player is allowed to play. Often video games focus on certain objectives for the player to complete, and it is the challenge for the player to discern the best and most efficient way to complete those with the objects and locations given. As technological capabilities have become more numerous – visuals have gotten sharper, hardware more advanced – this possibility space has grown. Games in which there is a clear possibility space, in which players have a great deal of freedom,  include “sandbox games” such as the Grand Theft Auto and Assassin’s Creed franchises. With this freedom comes a greater challenge for players to figure out the best way to approach a goal. Users are also able to tailor their play style according to personal strengths and even personality. Games in which users decide the fate of a character using a moral code, such as Fable, are some of the most customizable. Technological advancements, including those allowing for larger landscapes and more variation in the Grand Theft Auto series, have allowed for an unexpected development in rhetorical patterns.

The fourth title from the popular Civilization franchise.

Games such as Fable not only provide a fun experience for users, they also necessitate the use of anticipatory thinking. The experience of playing the game depends highly upon the consequences of the player’s choices. Simply, a player could choose to make the character good or evil. Thus the experience of playing Fable depends on the choices a player makes and how those choices affect the remainder of the story. Other games include structures that depend on the choices of the player. The Civilization series allows players complete control of a civilization, from its small beginnings to potential domination of the virtual world. Players make decisions surrounding technological advancements, advancements within the city’s cultural and social systems, and in warfare and battle with other civilizations. Yet in recent release Civilization V, players can choose any of five ways to “win” the game. Victory through diplomacy, technological advancement, and domination are all possible, but require the player to direct actions within the game specifically to those goals. Thus the game teaches, by way of necessity, to anticipate the repercussive effects of actions within the game. The possibility space of these games creates a unique rhetorical effect on players.

Choosing to assist a group of bandits in Fable will point the player’s moral compass away from good. Choosing to use a civilization’s vast military power will ensure victory in Civilization. Yet players of both of these games must understand the consequences of these actions to have success within the game. These unique patterns of play have been made possible by developments in the possibility space of the game. The same developments have allowed for greater freedom in “open world” games Assassin’s Creed and Grand Theft Auto. Despite stigmas surrounding their value, video games have undoubtedly evolved into complex forms of entertainment that promote beneficial behavior in many who use them.

Does mobile writing, “writing in the wild,” already happen?

I argue that it does, though we may not know it. Mobile writing takes the shape of social media, but social media has changed writing in the “wild” irreversibly. This type of writing is interactive and facilitates conversation that other forms of writing never could. Writing on a pad of paper could never match the capabilities of Twitter, FourSquare or Instagram. Those tools allow users to broadcast the same information, though seriously abridged, to the same people and more. But those tools also broadcast a much greater variety of information, including location and images especially. There is no longer a conventional writing space such as a dorm or library desk – now that space is everywhere with a WiFi signal. Yet are these tools leading people to produce content with no meaning? Assessing the content of social media is analogous to critiquing the strengths and weaknesses of a conversation. Such an activity sounds strange, and it is, but we should resist the urge to compare social media content to creative or even academic writing. Social media, though a form of writing in the wild, should never be compared to creative writing because the two are not in the same category.

Writing in the “Wild”

The closest relative of academic or creative writing that can be done in the field are blogs. Blogs are almost as user-friendly as social media, but readers expect a level of quality – and length – that social media can’t match. However, one can still write a blog online and in any location from which one could also send a Tweet. The concept of “liveblogging” has even come to popularity recently, as it combines some of the quality of a blog with the up-to-date status of a social media post. Clearly evident in liveblogging, writing quality content has moved physically to follow everywhere a smartphone or laptop can go. Wireless writing has vastly expanded the locations in which we can produce writing of high quality – thus it is premature to discredit the major shift to digital and technological writing. I welcome the move, and am encouraged by the thought that more people will be expressing themselves through digital media – while not being tethered by the ethernet cables and desktop computers of the past.

Data displays in an academic setting are as variable as they are useful. The forms through which an author can display data may take many different shapes and sizes. Authors and designers can tailor these displays to fit a certain audience or to display and emphasize key parts of a study. There are a multitude of ways designers can alter their displays to convey information. Designers also have a responsibility to display information clearly and concisely without being misleading. Yet data displays can greatly improve readers’ understanding of material presented in a study or work.

Designers of data displays, in order to have an effective data representation, must first consider the three aspects of audience, purpose, and context. In order to convey information effectively, displays must take into account the people who will be seeing them, along with the context in which the displays will appear. Of course, designers must also ensure that the chosen display best represents the purpose of the work or study of which it is a part. Taking a variety of forms, displays can include bar graphs, pie charts, and line graphs, and many others. Thus designers have the task of choosing among these options to best represent the data that is in focus. To direct them in designing a display, designers have six guidelines to follow.

Arrangement, emphasis, clarity, conciseness, tone and ethos are the six criteria that designers should use to direct their displays. Arrangement and emphasis are closely related – arrangement of data into a certain form can increase or decrease the emphasis of a particular finding or conclusion. Designers may choose to shift the scale of data on a graph, or may choose to show a horizontal graph rather than a vertical one for the sake of emphasis. While arrangement involves the data points themselves, clarity involves the aspects of a display that clarify the points of data that are represented. Aspects of a graph such as labels, legends, tick marks, line thickness, use of titles, and even color can alter a graph’s clarity to readers. Yet too many of these defining elements can decrease a graph’s conciseness. More elements means a higher chance of having a scattered or unclear graph. Thus conciseness involves having just enough elements on a graph to make a point, but not more. The tone of a graph results from many of these elements coming together and creating a graph that appears technical and professional while not seeming overly rigid and academic. Tone can incorporate such elements as typeface and use of color scales as well. The last, and one of the most significant, aspects of data displays is ethos.

The formula for Edward Tufte’s Lie Factor

Ethos concerns a graph’s credibility towards readers, and can have important implications for the graph’s effectiveness. Designers must ensure that their graphs are in no way misleading or misrepresentative of their data. Shifting a graph’s scale or altering the viewer’s perspective on it may lead viewers to form misguided conclusions about the data being represented. Yale professor Edward Tufte writes on the implications of misleading data displays in his book The Lie Factor. The Lie Factor, Tufte describes, is roughly the difference between how a graph is portrayed on paper and what the quantities actually represent. The formula Tufte presents measures the representations of the numbers on the graph against the actual quantities on which the graph is based. Graphs that show representations that are closely matched to actual data are honest. It is the responsibility of designers to ensure that representations are as close as possible to actual quantities. Keeping ethos, along with the other factors, as a guideline for their work will ensure that designers are effectively representing data.

Linguistic analysis can have a variety of applications across several different mediums. A useful tool for conducting such analysis is a concordance search, which organizes every instance of a word or phrase in a body of text. Such a search has become more accessible as computer technology has developed. Making the search for a specific word or phrase much faster and easier, concordance searches are useful especially for linguistic analysts. Applications for a concordance search include analyzing word frequency and learning about usage patterns for words or phrases.

Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness

In the field of text analysis, concordance searches are efficient ways of identifying patterns or studying word usage. In Introducing Electronic Text Analysis, Svenja Adolphs uses the example of searching through works of literature. Literary scholars have said about Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness that it contains a theme of vagueness and uncertainty. By using a concordance search for the word “vague” and its variants, these scholars can confirm the information about which they hypothesized. Such a search speeds up the human process of reading the book and picking out instances of vagueness and uncertainty, helping linguists who would rather not pore over pages and pages of text. Concordance searches are similarly efficient for those studying other literary or even academic works.

Concordance searches are helpful to analysts, but have certain fallacies for those seeking to learn about the occurrences of a certain word or phrase. A major drawback of these searches is that the context in which a word appears is not given or is only partial. Without the context surrounding a target word, the analyst’s ability to learn about how the word is used in a specific instance is blocked. This issue arises especially when dealing with words or phrases for which the meaning might be unclear. Words derived from a different language or idiomatic phrases can be particularly difficult, especially when the context for these items may be partial or not present. Though concordance searches may be much more efficient than manual analysis, analysts must be wary of potential problems they may run into during a search.

Concordance searches can be particularly effective and useful when comparing different texts against one another. Comparing the languages of different texts from the same place and the same time period can illustrate patterns in language, while conducting a search through texts of different time periods can illustrate changes in patterns. Searching for key words or phrases can be particularly enlightening for linguists as they study changes in language across years or even centuries. Though such analysis has been possible and has been conducted in the past, it is easier and more efficient with the help of concordance searches.

Search engines now help to shrink the ever-growing contents of the Internet, helping searchers pinpoint an exact idea or piece of information. Concordance searches exist in the same vein as search engines, but are more specialized and tailored for the purpose of analysis. Search engine giant Google has even directed its search capabilities to text analysis with Ngram Viewer, which allows users to search through one or more books for occurrences of a word or phrase. Such a move is one step in making concordance searches more accessible as a tool for text and literary analysis.

Fortune Magazine reported last year that of all the photographs ever taken, 10% were captured in 2011. Social media site Instagram has gained over 100 million users, and Facebook users continue to share over 250 million photographs every day. Though these numbers only take into account photographs, they appropriately reflect themes in Richard Lanham’s The Economics of Attention. Lanham’s work asserts that though people consistently cry out against rampant materialism, the materialism we see so often today has shifted from its traditional meaning.

Materialism of the past was associated with the simple acquisition of goods. Goods, quotes Lanham, that must be produced, assembled, bought and used – for these goods, “‘You’ve got to dig it, grow it, or build it; everything else is just fluff.'” Lanham quotes this sentiment about the “stuff” with which materialism was traditionally associated. Now, in contrast, people are preoccupied by “fluff,” or everything that is intangible and that most likely could be expressed over the Internet. This fluff means information, or photographs, or articles or news stories passed around the Internet to finally reach the consciousnesses of people around the world. People everywhere, to an extent, are less concerned about the acquisition of goods and more concerned about producing and sharing this “fluff.”

Perhaps this concern for “fluff” has contributed to such high rates of photo sharing online. Taking this case as an example, Lanham would attribute this high level of photo-sharing to people’s desire for attention. Concern for promoting one’s appearance online fuels activity on social media sites such as Instagram and Facebook. “Traditional” materialism also had to do with promoting one’s image as a status symbol or fashionable figure. Buying brand-name clothing or expensive products gave the impression of importance to onlookers. Thus the drive for this type of materialism was about the consumption of goods, but it was more about how those goods gave an impression to others. Social media sites take this type of materialism to a whole new level. Allowing users to instantly share photos of themselves and their lives contributes to a drive for more attention – more of the new kind of materialism. Gaining “followers” or “friends” on these sites is itself a quest for attention. Photo-sharing gains importance as the sharers gain a following. Likewise, the number of followers a person has lends a kind of importance to the person being followed.

Sharing trends in 2012

These trends all contribute to what seems to be an abandonment of the materialism with which we once were familiar. Yet social media has driven people to harness the traditional materialism to attain this new type of materialism that exists on the Internet. Our attitudes, our efforts and our daily actions depend on or are inevitably influenced by the drive for attention. This drive has never existed on such a scale, but it never could have without the existence of social media.

“Oratory is the art of enchanting the soul” – Plato

Plato’s Phaedrus, written in the 4th century BCE, confronts the elusive topic of rhetoric and persuasion. Socrates, Plato’s protagonist, engages in a dialogue with Phaedrus regarding the proper use and execution of rhetoric in an argument. Over the course of the excerpt given here, Socrates instructs Phaedrus in the art of rhetoric, which we can apply to our own world today.

Plato and Phaedrus first begin their discussion of rhetoric after Phaedrus becomes frustrated with an argument on love he had heard previously that day. As Phaedrus paraphrases the argument, Socrates deconstructs and improves it, informing Phaedrus as to why the argument could have been more convincing. Socrates plays the role of a teacher here, offering such lessons as “every discourse ought to be a living creature, having a body of its own and a head and feet; there should be a middle, beginning, and end, adapted to one another and to the whole.” Similarly, Socrates goes on to suggest that a rhetorician include “the comprehension of scattered particulars in one idea; as in our definition of love, which whether true or false certainly gave clearness and consistency to the discourse, the speaker should define his several notions and so make his meaning clear.” Both statements propose improvements to the argument on love, and both are helpful to those seeking to persuade others today. These two statements of advice may even seem to be common knowledge to people today who have learned the elements of an argumentative essay or speech. Socrates’ words are far-reaching and instructive even today.

 Later, Socrates begins in a discussion of truth:

“Oratory is the art of enchanting the soul, and therefore the orator must learn the differences of human souls by reflection and experience—they are so many and of such a nature, and from them come the differences between man and man. Having proceeded thus far in his analysis, he will next divide speeches into their different classes: “Such and such persons,” he will say, “are affected by this or that kind of speech in this or that way,””

Socrates asserts that in an argument, truth is less important than guiding one’s argument to produce a response from the one engaged in a discussion. Socrates’ assertion is an interesting one, for it proposes that a rhetorician ought to forgo truth in order to win an argument. While it may seem controversial, it may also ring true even today. Socrates directs his argument to Phaedrus in this way, and in doing so continues to affect the world of argument and rhetoric today.

Danah Boyd offers an introductory study of a sometimes hard-to-grasp form of expression in “A Blogger’s Blog: Exploring the Definition of a Medium.” Over the course of the article, Boyd attempts to lasso the act of blogging into a definable sphere, using research and testimony from a range of experienced bloggers. Through wrestling for a definition for a blog, Boyd illuminates portions of the nature of blogging. Problems with definition arise, mainly with the use of metaphor to facilitate the understanding of blogs. Blogs as “online diaries” is not a sufficient explanation for Boyd, a sentiment with which I agree. Though many may use blogs for accounts of personal thoughts or events on a day-to-day basis, the act of blogging can be much more than an individual expressing his or her feelings. Boyd reminds us that blogging can be a form of journalism, and cautions people at large not to regard journalist bloggers as purely amateur or even naive. Apart from the uses of blogs, though there are many, Boyd also addresses the public aspect of blogging and how bloggers act when it seems that any wandering eye can fall on their personal online space. Yet Boyd makes a clear point in saying that bloggers expect a great deal of onlookers, but that expectation does not dissuade them. Rather, bloggers must welcome readers in order to attract those with whom their content will resonate. If that means that a few unwelcome guests may visit, bloggers accept such an event as a possibility of having a blog in the first place. Yet ultimately, this form of personal expression, which cannot be seen as a simple diary, is about connecting with like-minded readers – from wherever those readers may come.

“Blogs blur the line between orality and textuality, altering both the mechanisms for performance the power dynamics between performer(s) and audience. The medium creates a dynamic that is synchronous and asynchronous, performative and voyeuristic. Yet, it is unclear how the blurring of the lines in this medium may affect the relationship between orality and textuality in other mediums.”