Haelin's Site

Haelin Roberts

Prof. Emerson

11/14/17

Revision Strategy

For my essay I plan to use Wasik’s “My Crowd Experiment: The Mob Project”, Restak’s “Attention Deficit: The Brain Syndrome of Our Era”, and an article from the New York Times titled “Addicted to Distraction”. From Wasik’s essay I will show how his mobs prove that people have become so easy to distract that they will go out of their way to see nothing if they hear or see about it on the internet. People have too much time to kill and are not using it productively. This will directly relate to Restak’s essay where I will use his points about how distracting the internet has been for young adults and with so much stimulation it is almost impossible to focus. When one cannot focus they are unable to truly find their purpose. In my outside source, the New York Times headlines how distracting the average work day is. The reason that it is so hard to focus is that the internet delivers instant gratification, where purpose is something that takes a long time to find and refine. The more time that is spent on the internet, the more stimulation the mind needs, the drive from the brain to become more stimulated takes away from the focus on the task at hand.

Haelin Roberts

10/7/16

Prof. Emerson

Podcast Reflection

Following this interview, I was struck by the differences in how people see technology. For example, my cousin Hayden viewed technology in his childhood very differently than I had. I think that comes from him being older than me, even though technology has certainly affected his life, it wasn’t as prevalent at such a young age. For me, the rapid advancement of technology throughout my childhood has made those my age and younger dependent on it. While Hayden saw it as a distraction that can be avoided with self-control, I see it as an almost unavoidable distraction since I grew up like that. Although Hayden did go through extra schooling that slowed his progression to traditional adulthood, I believe he is someone who will pass most of those milestones fairly soon. He has a future that is well planned out and put together and as you can see from his dedication to schoolwork I believe he will follow through with his future plans.

Haelin Roberts

10/22/17

Prof. Emerson

Naysayer

In Restak’s essay, he analyzes how the brain has been changed as the information era has flooded in, “In response to this media torrent, the brain has had to make fundamental adjustments. The demarcation between here and there has become blurred. Thanks to technology, each of us exists simultaneously in not just one here but in several” (380). While the mind has adapted to be able to do multiple tasks at one time, this does not necessarily mean that it is a positive trait. This takes away attention from other tasks and instead of one well completed task, you end up with four partially completed tasks.

Haelin Roberts

10/17/17

Prof. Emerson

Revision Plan

For my essay, the biggest change I need to make is to my thesis, when transitioning from my architectural draft to my actual rough draft, I found that I had much more evidence and ideas that went against my thesis rather than supporting it. I am much more comfortable writing to support the opposition, I think that the essay will be much better if I do it this way. As far as writing goes, when I looked at my last paper I saw that I had multiple issues where I would have a claim sentence that didn’t fully outline the topic of the paragraph, I want to focus on making my claim sentences very precise and full. Another thing that I did was leave “hit and run” quotes, I think this comes from thinking that the quote can explain itself, when I really need to clear it up for the reader and make my essay much more clear and strong. The overall strength of my claim sentences is what I think needs the most improvement on this essay, often they were too weak or in some cases too broad and then the paragraph below it struggles to outline all the points of my claim sentence. Often in my synthesis I would struggle to fully outline my point and left dangling modifiers that don’t give the right amount of detail to my paper and cause it to be underdeveloped.

Haelin Roberts

10/17/17

Prof. Emerson

Short Sentences

Adults need to be able to shift their attention easily to be able to have a steady career and home life. The modern world moves at such a fast pace, that the average adult can no longer be unable to quickly change their attention, they are now required to be on top of ten things at once. This change in the attention of adults is best stated by Sam Anderson who states,  “The need for more education to survive in an information-based economy; fewer entry-level jobs even after all that schooling, young people feeling less rush to marry because of the general acceptance of pre-marital sex, cohabitation, and birth control; and young women feeling less rush to have babies given their wide range of career options…” (6)

With the fast pace of the modern world, adults need to focus their attention on multiple things at once. The average adult has to be able to focus on multiple things at once to keep up with the information essential to living in today’s world. Sam Anderson best outlines this in saying, “The need for more education to survive in an information-based economy; fewer entry-level jobs even after all that schooling, young people feeling less rush to marry because of the general acceptance of pre-marital sex..”(6)

I think that ePortfolio is a really good idea that allows students to easily share their work with both classmates and teachers.  It has a lot of nice features that make It easy for students to customize their page and make it theirs. It also allows for sharing across multiple forms of media like podcasts and youtube.

The problem I see with this it is is fairly complicated. Much of the customization is what makes it so confusing as it is hard to navigate through the multiple menus and options. With that being said, it is a nice option, maybe the designers could give the people an option for how much control they have over the site. A help guide could also work.

Overall, the website should be very useful for students to share their work with peers and be able to edit and review each others work. It also keeps all the work in one place which is very convenient when looking for past work. The only drawback to this site is that it may take a long time to figure out and it doesn’t replace pen and paper.

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