Unit 2 the Sources Assignment: Boyd, Digital Natives and Digital Literacy

Danah Boyd, "Literacy: Are Today's Youth Digital Natives?'"

• Danah Boyd's "Literacy: Are Today's Youth Digital Natives?" From It's Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens, Yale University Press, 2014. (Here are the footnotes for the chapter)  

Background on Boyd & her book

• Some background on Boyd: her homepage, blog, twitter feed, social bookmarks (on delicious), wikipedia page  

• The text we are reading is a chapter from Boyd's book, It's Complicated: the Social lives of Networked Teens." 
  Boyd has made the text freely available online as a .pdf (what does that tell us about the author and her attitude to her work?) 

Videos of Boyd and other Writers discussing Digital Natives

• Boyd talk to Leo Laporte about how the idea of 'Digital Natives' is a misnomer. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0k-Rx4sht8 (4 minutes)
• Boyd talks to UW Comm undergraduate Austin Williams about her book, "It's Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTvR2EFXRYU (12 minutes)
• Marc Prensky (often credited with coining the term “digital natives”) explains digital natives to PBS interviewer on Frontline https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGQLTHyRG_g
• Two talks that show how widespread the terms “digital natives” and digital immigrants” are. 
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_9gI0B4nS4 and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRQdAOrqvGg (shows existence and popularity of the term ‘digital native’)
• Do "Digital Natives" Exist? Idea Channel, PBS Digital Studios. Fun entertaining video that echoes many of Boyd’s claims. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WVKBAqjHiE
• Boyd cites the influential work of Tarleton Gillespie on the politics of algorithms.
• This 5 minute interview of Gillespie by an undergraduate spells out some main ideas of his work in an accessible way. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cT1i1_Nydw

Main Collection of Teaching Materials for Boyd and Unit 2

• This file contains a collection of teaching materials for Boyd and unit 2. This includes pre-reading ideas, discussion questions, charting ideas, argument maps, reading responses and some classroom activities.  
• Here is a collection of materials for drafting paper 2. It includes sample prompts, peer review forms, templates, etc. 
• A selection of source texts and "research frames" for analyzing Boyd's article. 
• Boyd's article annotated with notes/charting ideas (by Jamie.)

Digital Literacy Materials for Unit 2

• a collection of materials for introducing and teaching digital literacy. 

Digital Literacy exercise: GIBill.com

As an exercise in digital literacy you could have students look at the site GIBill.com. This was a site set up by a group of for-profit colleges designed to persuade 
veterans to enroll in for-profit schools. It was shut down by the federal government as it was deemed to be a deceptive site that tricked veterans into thinking it
was organized by the government and was primarily informational and educational. The site has now been replaced by this message:

Using the archive.org site you can go back in time and see the GIBill.com site. For example: https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://gibill.com

Consider these snapshots of the site

Jan 29, 2011: https://web.archive.org/web/20110129071743/http://www.gibill.com/ and see the FAQ section (what seems missing?)
Dec 28 2011: https://web.archive.org/web/20111228165411/http://www.gibill.com/

Jun 27 2012 https://web.archive.org/web/20120627203241/http://www.gibill.com/

You could ask students to consider how the site works to persuade its audience, and why the government might have objected to some 
of the strategies used. It might be interesting to compare the GIBill.com site with the department of veterans affairs site that 
has replaced it, http://www.benefits.va.gov/gibill/. 

Unit 2 Teaching Materials from Previous Semesters

• This collection of materials should help with most aspects of teaching Pinker, from pre-reading, to discussing, to drafting and analyzing the text.
• Sample student paper 
• An op-ed that provides a good example of how authors often use one text to complicate another. David Brooks summarizes the common idea that the internet has played an important role in polarizing political views over the last 10 years. He then discusses how recent research complicates this view. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/20/opinion/20brooks.html?hp   

The Assignment, Grading and Rubrics

• Prospectus assignment (a warm-up assignment to outline sources before they write their draft) 
  

• Assignment prompt with drafting advice (Alicia), Assignment prompt and rubric and Assignment Breakdown (Rose)

• Assignment checklist and grading rubric

• Paper #2 Prompt.doc (Daniela - Fall 2011), Paper #2 Prompt (Tyler - Fall 2011)

• Sample charting of draft paper (from previous semester)

Sample Schedules & Ideas for Modeling How Authors Extend, Complicate, Illustrate, etc. a Text 

• Overview of possible class activities/plans for unit 2

• Student group projects and presentation activities (uses Food Inc.) 

• Sample schedule for unit 2 (Alicia)

• Introducing the project: Practice with extending, complicating, refining, and qualifying an argument (Rose)

• Bittman's "Junk Food Guidelines Won't Help - short opinion piece about regulating junk food. See comments section to model how readers respond by extending, illustrating, challenging, etc.

• Model sources and how to connect them to Gladwell - uses Jared Diamond, but also texts that discuss cultural legacies, fictional texts, case studies, etc.

• More model sources - how to use the Tough article ("What it Takes to Make a Student") which complicates Gladwell's use of KIPP schools and education research, plus Alicia's example of how to build a body paragraph using a text that complicates the rice paddies chapter.

Drafting and Peer Review

• COLLECTED DRAFTING MATERIALS, templates, body paragraphs, sample papers, etc. for unit 2

• Guide to the organization/moves for paper 1, by Amanda Fiore and Rachel Gellman.

• COLLECTED GRAMMAR, editing and mechanics advice unit 2

• Exercises and groupwork for drafting paper

• Writing a prospectus/structured outline

• Drafting exercises - helping students connect the texts

• Drafting template - provides framework of major moves students should make, plus examples.

• Body paragraph templates and then a body paragraph template with model (using Gladwell and a complicating, outside text)

• Template for introducing authors

• Sample body paragraphs on Rifkin (Rose)

• Sample body paragraphs and template phrases

• Sample peer review form for paper 2

• SAMPLE STUDENT PAPERS - 5 sample papers of varying quality

• Words and exercises to use for making transitions, signaling relationships, establishing connections, etc.

• Guideline for Assignment 2 (Outline) this was used for Chua, but can be useful when thinking of how to structure this assignment.

Researching, Finding/Evaluating Sources, Creating an Annotated Bibliography, and Avoiding Plagiarism

• Teaching students about research, finding and evaluating sources, creating an annotated bibliography, and avoiding plagiarism. By Emma Lee Whitworth, with editorial assistance from Michael Underwood and Julie Williams.

Unit 3: Strategies Assignment

Nicholas Carr, "Is Google Making Us Stupid?"

• Carr, "Is Google Making Us Stupid?"
• Carr's blog page and his wikipedia page
• Videos of Carr explaining his arguments: 1) video interview with Canadian host Steve Paikin ("Is the Internet Making Us Stupid?" 16 minutes)
  The Harvard Book Store presents Nicholas Carr: The Shallows - What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains (49 mins)
  Presentation at  the Commonwealth Club of California, "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" (60 minutes - you can select "chapters" from the talk)
•  Nicholas Carr & Stephen Fry on The Effects of Web Culture (9 minutes)

Responses, Extensions & Challenges to Carr

• Encyclopedia Britannica hosted a forum on Carr's text. Many prominent writers responded with some short, lively posts. Here, for example,  
  is Clay Shirky's "Why Abundance is Good: A Reply to Nick Carr." 
• Shirky, "Does The Internet Make You Smarter?" 
• Pinker, "Mind Over Mass Media" (html) and also as a pdf.
• IQ squared debate in which Carr and Andrew Keen debate opponents.  Short talks, many debaters tricks, could be used to look at strategies. The topic is whether smart technologies are hurting or harming our intelligence and literacy. 

Teaching Rhetorical Strategies 

• See material from first 3 weeks, much of which can be adapted to re-introduce strategies 
• Into to rhetorical strategies, by Amanda Fuller 
• Materials for analyzing strategies. Includes definitions of strategies, framing, demagoguery, plus material for argument evaluation. List of short texts for analysis.
• Introduction to Rhetorical Strategies and analysis: there is an interesting blog called "Silver Tongue Times" that produces short rhetorical analyses of everyday things/texts. It's run by some PhD students at Carnegie Mellon. They try to make rhetorical analysis relevant to ordinary people (or as they say, "Rhetorical criticism for the engaged citizen.")  There's a new piece that examines a key analogy Jon Stewart used at his recent D.C. speech. It's very simple, and could be used for first year students as a way of introducing rhetorical strategies and their analysis.
• Intro to Strategies/Ways of Approaching the Teaching of Strategies (Powerpoint)
• Powerpoint file on visual rhetoric and argument. Contains terms for analyzing visual texts, plus examples and lecture notes. Likely to be far more than you'll need, but may contain some useful materials. Large file (4 mgb). Also this.
• Rhetorical Strategies - big collection of teaching materials, examples, discussion ideas. Needs some editing. 
• More on introducing rhetorical strategies
• Intro to rhetorical strategies in verbal and visual texts
  Visual texts to introduce rhetorical strategies:
• Photos of student election campaign signs - can be used to consider strategies and effectiveness
  Print texts to introduce rhetorical strategies:
• Parry's "The Art of Branding a Condition." Short text written by a medical marketer revealing some of the strategies used in drug advertising and marketing. Can be used to introduce rhetorical strategies 
• Discussion ideas, exercises, homework and group work that uses the Parry text.
• More activities and exercises that use Parry, and some class activities or homework
• Excerpt - strategy in-class exercise (Skloot).doc -Daniela Schonberger, Fall 2011 

Sample Student Paper

• Student Rhetorical Analysis of LaPierre Speech 

Lesson Plans: 

• Possible sequence of class plans/activites for unit 3
• Handout and lesson plan for teaching ethos, pathos and logos
• PROMPT, RUBRIC, TEMPLATE PHRASES, SAMPLE PAPER
• Drafting - template sentences for asignment 3
• Using Swales CARS model to discuss strategies identifiable in academic research writing (see also this article by Sutton, "Swales’s “Moves” and the Research Paper Assignment" that introduces Swales and connects to undergrad writing).
• Rhetorical Strategies.ppt  

Past Prompts:

• Teaching Enron: The Rhetoric and Ethics of Whistle-Blowing" RICHARD HOUSE, ANNELIESE WATT, AND JULIA M. WILLIAMS, http://faculty.washington.edu/tfreel/courses/tc401/assignments/Enron.pdf
• Prompt, the draft of which I passed out in our meeting. This approaches P3 in two parts: a short analytical paper and a creative project. I may, and you are more than welcome to, continue to tinker/add to it. Share your ideas! (Alicia)
• Long essay prompt (Rose)
• RWS100 - Fall 2011 - Paper 3 Prompt (Skloot).doc A strategy-oriented paper prompt. -Daniela Schonberger, Fall 2011 
• Project 3 Prompt - Tyler Thompson, Fall 2011 

Mixture of print and visual texts to introduce rhetorical strategies:

• A collection of different kinds of print and visual texts can be useful to emphasize how authors use different kinds of strategies, even when the argument is the same. The following texts all make a similar argument about the Texas Board of Education's decisions to change their textbooks.
• "Texas Should Not Define Education." An editorial from SDSU's student newspaper, The Daily Aztec (March 22, 2010).
• "Don't Mess with Texas....Textbooks," by Chuck Norris. Human Events, March 16, 2010.
• Episode of The Daily Show. (The segment on the Texas Board of Education begins at 9:13 and ends at 14:15.)
• Segment from The Colbert Report, "I's On Edjukashun." (From March 16, 2010 episode). Features historian Eric Foner
• "Twisting History in Texas," by Eric Foner, The Nation, March 18, 2010.  Could be used to compare strategies - Foner on Colbert, Foner in the Nation.
• Cartoon: "Texas Schoolboard Bookburning." By Monte Wolverton, March 14, 2010. http://blog.cagle.com/2010/03/14/texas-schoolboard-bookburning
• Cartoon: On the Texas School Board of Education vote. March 17, 2010 cartoon published in the Atlantis Journal-Constitution by Mike Luckovich.

Assignment Description Unit 4

• Prompt and assignment description for unit 4

Texts that Respond to Carr

• Shirky, "Does The Internet Make You Smarter?" (pdf,  web page)  This text takes on Carr's claims directly, acknowledging some of his points but complicating the overall argument.
• Pinker, "Mind Over Mass Media" Pinker challenges Carr, mounting a direct and rather dismissive attack on his entire project.
• Howard Rheingold, "Attention Literacy."  Rheingold argues that "you need to learn how to exercise mindful deployment of your attention online if you are going to become a critical consumer of digital media." Rheingold does not believe the internet inevitably produces the effects Carr claims, but suggests that students must be taught how to manage and be aware of how they direct their attention. 
• Encyclopedia Britannica hosted a forum on Carr's text. Many prominent writers responded with some short, lively posts. Here, for example,  is Clay Shirky's "Why Abundance is Good: A Reply to Nick Carr." Some of these texts support Carr, some extend his claims, others complicate, challenge or qualify them.

• Edge magazine hosted an online debate of Carr's article.  Again, there are a lot of short texts by prominent writers and prognosticators, including W. Daniel Hillis, Kevin Kelly, Larry Sanger, George Dyson, Jaron Lanier,Douglas Rushkoff,W. Daniel Hillis, David Brin  

Texts Students Could Draw on to "Enter the Conversation"

• Jabr, F. (2013).  Scientific American. ‘The Reading Brain in the Digital Age: The Science of Paper versus Screen. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/reading-paper-screens/  
• Hooper and Herath,  Is Google Making Us stupid? The Impact of the Internet on Reading Behaviour’.  
• Sparrow, B., Liu, J., Wegner, D M. (2011) Google Effects on Memory: Cognitive Consequences of Having Information at Our Fingertips. Safer Communications. [online] July. Sciencexpress, Sciencemag. Available at: http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~wegner/pdfs/science.1207745.full.pdf 
• PBS video on new media and changes in cognition (10 minutes).  Science correspondent Miles O'Brien looks at what could be happening to teenagers' brains as they develop in a rapid-fire, multitasking world of technology and gadgets. Jan 5, 2011.
• "Serious reading takes a hit from online scanning and skimming, researchers say." By Michael S. Rosenwald, Published: April 6. 
• Is Online Skimming Hurting Reading Comprehension? Transcript (and audio) of Robin Young's interview with Maryanne Wolf, cognitive neuroscientist at Tufts University. Wolf discusses her concerns and her research. She fears that the practice of the internet is ruining our ability for “deep reading.” 
• Students Reading E-Books Are Losing Out, Study Suggests. By ANNIE MURPHY PAUL. New York Times, APRIL 10, 2014
• To Remember a Lecture Better, Take Notes by Hand Students do worse on quizzes when they use keyboards in class. ROBINSON MEYER, Atlantic Monthly, MAY 1 2014.
• What’s Lost as Handwriting Fades? MARIA KONNIKOVAJUNE 2, 2014 New York Times.
• The World is Digital, But Please Close Your Laptop in Class. By Peter C. Herman. (SDSU Professor) 
•  Hyper and Deep Attention: The Generational Divide in Cognitive Modes. Katherine Hayles. Profession 2007. 
• The Flight From Conversation. New York Times, April 21, 2012. Sherry Turkle is a psychologist and professor at M.I.T. and the author, most recently, of “Alone Together: Why We Expect More From Technology and Less From Each Other.”
• Why Can’t Johnny Write? Don’t Blame Social Media.  http://mashable.com/2013/03/04/social-media-ffect-on-writing/ 
•   “2b or not 2b?”  David Crystal. The Guardian, July 2008.  Despite doom-laden prophecies, texting has not been the disaster for language many feared, argues linguistics professor David Crystal. On the contrary, it improves children's writing and spelling
•  Talking With Your Fingers By JOHN MCWHORTER, April 23, 2012.
•  John McWhorter, TED talk: Txtng is killing language. JK!!

Alternative Assignments

• Maggie Hess produced this assignment that involves producing a parody text that engages an environmental issue. She has produced a prompt, rubric, and sampletexts for students to draw from. 
• Creative Final presentation RWS100 - Creative Final Presentation.doc and students can do evaluations of each presenter (ungraded):RWS100 - Final Presentation Evaluation Sheet.doc -Daniela Schonberger, Fall 2011
• RWS 100 - Final Project.doc A final presentation in partners where students can choose a website, commercial, or magazine to rhetorically analyze. -Daniela Schonberger, Fall 2011

THE END/WPA

• Happy endings for your class (ways of ending the class and organizing evaluations, etc.)
• The WPA (preparing students for WPA). Here's a file of information that I've used for a final unit on the WPA that could work for 100 or 200, it includes info on the WPA, an outline on the lesson plan, sample article, essay and WPA evaluation. Here's an evaluation assignment (students respond to a classmate's essay) that partners with the unit.
• A helpful prezi presentation by Eddie Ling on the WPA: https://prezi.com/ksuffxtraeeg/sdsu-wpa/ 
• An in-class assignment I've used either on the last day of class or on final's day so students can reflect on their progress and I can receive feedback apart from evaluations. (Alicia)

If We Use Gladwell

Here are some links that might be useful.

• From Gladwell's blog, "What is Outliers about?" http://www.gladwell.com/outliers/index.html
• Charlie Rose video interview with Gladwell, http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/9855#
• CBC interview http://www.cbc.ca/spark/2008/12/video-malcolm-gladwell-on-outliers/
• Macleans interview with Gladwell, http://www2.macleans.ca/2008/11/21/macleans-interview-malcolm-gladwell/print/
• Guardian interview with Gladwell, http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/nov/16/malcolm-gladwell-interview-outliers - maybe we could use this summary of Gladwell, plus an excerpt from the book?
• GLADWELL EXCERPT - the first chapter of the book
• Gladwell responds to David Brooks, http://gladwell.typepad.com/gladwellcom/2008/12/brooks-on-outliers.html

• Commentary review of Gladwell: http://www.commentarymagazine.com/viewarticle.cfm/outliers--the-story-of-success-by-malcolm-gladwell-14689

Using Haidt Text on Ethics, Evolution, Reasoning etc

• Chapter 4 of The Happiness Hypothesis, by Haidt:  http://www.happinesshypothesis.com/happiness-hypothesis-ch4.pdf
• Haidt, "The New Synthesis in Moral Psychology"  http://people.virginia.edu/~jdh6n/science.html
• Chapter 1 of The Happiness Hypothesis, by Haidt http://www.happinesshypothesis.com/happiness-hypothesis-ch1.pdf

  http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/316/5827/998?ijkey=9S1Vi6nUWCqY.&keytype=ref&siteid=sci

• "Revealing The Origins Of Morality -- Good And Evil, Liberal And Conservative" http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/05/070517142545.htm
• Jonathan Haidt on the difference combination of moral principles adopted by republicans and conservatives, and why this eads to miscommunication. http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/haidt08/haidt08_index.html
• Haidt, "The Emotional Dog and its Rational Tail" http://www.faculty.virginia.edu/haidtlab/articles/haidt.emotionaldog.manuscript.pdf

Framing Articles? 

Perhaps we could use this article on framing, "The Art of Reframing Political Debates," by Charlotte Ryan and William Gamson, Contexts, Spring 2006.

It is short, pretty engaging, helps with discussions of assumptions, could set students up for 200, and in a sense the issue of framing moves them toward rhetorical analysis without it being called this. It could also open the possibility of students using visual texts, and might also follow on from the work just done on strategies.

Students could use this text as a way of analyzing another text that discusses a social movement, issue, or social problem, or they could take a visual text like the Daily Show and examine how it reframes an issue. 

Or, perhaps the assignment could be for the student to analyze the way a text frames an issue, and make the case for a productive reframing of that case so as to be more persuasive, reach a broader audience, etc.

Could also use one of more of the following to help explain what framing is about, or as target  texts to analyze: 

• Parry, "The Art of Branding a Condition"  
• "Policy as Product: Morality and Metaphor in Health Policy Discourse." This is an investigation of the limits of the market metaphor as frame for thinking about health care - could follow onfrom Enron, and be used as a lens to investigate other rethinkings and reframings in current context.
• The FrameWorks Perspective: Strategic Frame Analysis, http://www.frameworksinstitute.org/perspective.html 
• Frameworks, "Reframing Community Messages" 

EXAMPLE One Event: Three Frames, Three Solutions

http://www.c3.ucla.edu/toolbox/terms-concepts/strategic-frame-analysis/strategic-communication-terms

Charlotte Ryan, author of Prime Time Activism, offers a good example of how one event can be framed in many ways, with a profound impact on the event's meaning. Consider the following three different versions of one news story:

1. "An infant left sleeping in his crib was bitten repeatedly by rats while his 16-year-old mother went to cash her welfare check."
2. "An eight-month-old South End boy was treated yesterday after being bitten by rats while sleeping in his crib. Tenants said that repeated requests for extermination had been ignored by the landlord. He claimed that the tenants did not properly dispose of their garbage."
3. "Rats bit eight-month old Michael Burns five times yesterday as he napped in his crib. Burns is the latest victim of a rat epidemic plaguing inner-city neighborhoods. A Public Health Department spokesperson explained that federal and state cutbacks forced short-staffing at rat control and housing inspection programs."

Each version of the story represents a different frame-in other words, each has a distinct definition of the issue, of who is responsible, and of how the issue might be resolved. The first version, by emphasizing the age and actions of the mother (leaving her baby to cash a welfare check), suggests that the problem is irresponsible teens having babies. The solution would be reforming welfare to discourage or punish such irresponsible behavior.

Most articles about low-income people use the first version news story frame. It illustrates a news story that is episodic in its approach to a specific problem.

In version two, the issue is a landlord-tenant dispute about responsibility for garbage. The solution depends on the reader's perspective: either stronger enforcement of laws related to a landlord's responsibilities, or laws that would make it easier for a landlord to evict irresponsible tenants.

Only the third version really gets into larger issues about the impact of funding cuts on basic services in low-income communities. It illustrates a news story that is thematic in its approach to a specific problem.