Website Research Portfolio Entry

Watters, Audrey. "Texting in the Classroom: Not Just a Distraction." Edutopia. The George Lucas Educational Foundation, 21 Sept. 2011. Web. 06 Nov. 2012. . This article looks at many of the negative effects, educational and medical, of texting in the classroom. The bottom line to this article is that text messaging causes distractions in the classroom, causing students to not pay attention to what is going on in the classroom. This is reflected in students grades and performance in the classroom. I would use this article to assist in answering my research question "What negative effects does texting in the classroom on student's behavior and classroom performance. Bodeeb, Julia. "Students Texting: What Teachers Can Do About Student Texting During School." Bright Hub Education. N.p., 26 June 2012. Web. 06 Nov. 2012. . This article looks at the negative effects of texting in the classroom but it focuses more on the effects on student's behavior. This article looks into the ways that behavior in students and their interaction with their teachers and peers has changed due to texting and distractions in the classroom. I plan to use this article to help support my claim that texting in the classroom is negative and hurts student's grades and behavior in the classroom.

Research Portfolio Image and Other Source Entry

Texting Closeup. 2011. Photograph. Wikimedia Commons, Providence and Tampa. Wikimedia. By BuzzFarmers. 16 Sept. 2011. Web. 4 Nov. 2012. OTHER SOURCE-SCHOLARLY ARTICLE Ryker, Randy E., Chuck Viosca, Shari Lawrence, and Betty Kleen. "Texting and the Efficacy of Mnemonics: Is Too Much Texting Detrimental?" Information Systems Education Journal 9.2 (2011): 27-33. Web. http://isedj.org/2011-9/N2/ISEDJv9n2p27.html This article looks at how "text lingo" effects students progress and work in the classroom. It will be beneficial to my research because it focuses in the negative effects "text lingo" is having on student's grammar and ability to succeed in language arts, reading, english and writing classes.

10/29/12 Blog Prompt

As a citizen of the nation of Facebook (or "Facebookistan"), what are your rights and responsibilities? How does this podcast--and a larger discussion of social media, which includes using blogs--fit within this class? - Can I just start out by saying that the "My mom's on Facebook" song was so funny and I can testify to the mom's and dad's creeping around to see what you are doing. Mine are generally pretty tame when it comes to that. My mom just likes to post lots of mushy/sweet/encouraging stuff on my timeline... It isn't so bad! :) As a citizen of "Facebookistan" our rights are really restricted to our own personal profiles, those profiles of our "friends" and those public/fan pages. We control what we write on these social media sites. It is our responsibility to be accountable for the words we write. I think this subject fits in with our class because it is very relavant and social media sites are where we often get the majority of our information. That in itself is relevant to the class because that is a good portion of what we talk about. The information we receive through social media can influence our opinion and also the resources we seek when looking for research. (This comes in to play in our discussion about filter bubbles) Word Court: 223

Blog Prompt 10/22/12

What is a filter bubble?- A filter bubble is an online "circle" of information that is filtered towards you and your most frequent searches. What are the potential personal drawbacks of these filter bubbles? What are the potential problems these filter bubbles might cause for your academic research?- I feel like the personal drawbacks are similar to the drawbacks that could occur while researching. If the search only turns out information that is specific to the things I commonly search for then I am going to be getting very biased information, resulting in invalid research. What are some filter bubbles that you've noticed in your own life?- I have notices some filter bubbles in my circle of close friends. I tend to surround myself with people that believe generally the same beliefs as I do so the information I hear and the discussions I have with my friends is usually one sided. Word Count: 245

Blog Prompt 10/15/12

The Appeal to Emotion Logical Fallacy This fallacy is often used in PSA commercials as well as many "anti-" commercials. In this particular commerical, we see it being used to make viewers connect emotionally with the topic of the commercial. This commerial is an anti-texting and driving commerical that subjects arounds the story of a young girl and her story about the tragic end to her sister's life due to her reading a text from her sister while driving. This comercial uses the "Appeal to Emotion" fallacy by telling the personal story of this family's tragedy to inform people about the dangers of texting and driving. I feel that this fallacy is often very effective, I know it is for me. Whenever I see this commercial my heart breaks for this family and definitely makes me think twice before I try to text and drive. That is the point of commercials such as this, usually to make you think twice before doing whatever the commercial is against (texting and driving, drugs, alcohol, unprotected sex, ect.)or to persuade you to donate to their cause (animal shelters). These often work because of our emotions, especially for women.

Research Portfolio 10/10/12

My research question is "What negative effects is texting in the classroom having on student's grades and behavior?" My argument is that texting in the classroom is distracting students from their learning. It is negatively effecting their grades and behavior because their attention is being drawn away from using the full potential of their brain to learn. Students are more interested in the latest status update or the conversation they are having via text message with their friend that is sitting right beside them. These distractions are causing a slide in grades and causing issues with student behavior because it is causing tension between teachers and their students. Teachers want and expect the full attention of their students and the students expect to be able to do whatever they want to do (and they assume that their social media world is more important than anything else going on.) To support my argument, I would need statistics, articles (both popular and scholarly) and interviews with possibly students and teachers (getting their view of this topic.) These are the sources that I feel will be the most useful to me in my research process! With our topic being relevant and very current in the news, magazine (a credible one) articles are going to be very beneficial to me! Word Count: 216

Blog Prompt for 10/8/12

Major Discipline: Communications Database: Alt-Press Watch The results that I got from this database were really informative. There were a lot of articles about the subject I am researching specifically. I am really excited to use these kind of databases for my research. The difference between searching in a subject specific database and in Discovery?- Searching in a subject specific database narrows down specifically what I am looking for, making the process much faster I think. With Discovery, which is great because most of the results were accessible through the library, but it brings up a lot of articles and such that are not always relevant to what I need. Using the subject specific database was much easier and the majority of the articles weren't exactly relevant to what I was looking for. I think I would use both of them but probably the subject specific searching over Discovery. Discovery is a great resource because most of the results it turns out are available in the library which is very convenant but it didn't do a very good job initially of filtering out irrelevant results. If I refined research, I got some better results but that is a step more in the process than required by the subject specific databases. Word Count: 210