For-Profit Universities- Reaction

Before watching these videos, I thought that for-profit universities were just like community colleges but for more specialized degrees like fashion or graphic design. I believed that it was a cheap education with flexible hours. Although I was right about the flexible hours, after hearing some stories and facts, I now believe that these colleges are just scams. These schools actually cost more than the average state school in California does. I was shocked to hear that the recruiters target low income kids and even veterans solely to get government aid. Although these colleges only contain about 10% of the nation's students, they bring in about 25% of the government student aid. Before, it seemed like education is more important to these schools than it is to non-profit universities. However, my view changed when I learned that these companies spend about two times more of their profits on marketing than educators. The recruiters are taught to pick at these kids' weak points until they sign up for the university. Once they sign up, the kids are immediately brought to the financial aid office where they take out a student loan with high interest that they can't possibly pay off. I would really like to learn more about how these schools are regulated by the government and hear some statistics on how successful the average person who graduates is.

Final Essay, Analysis of Thompson

Ally Ferrell

Professor Werry

RWS 100

September 26, 2014

Response to Thompson

The internet has only been around for a few decades, yet has become one of the most prominent technologies in society today. Almost everyone you see will have access to the web just sitting in their pocket. Because of its relevance and easy access, the internet has become just as much of a writing tool as a pencil and paper are. The real question here though is, is this tool actually improving writing? The general consensus seems to be that the internet has decreased today’s teens’ writing skills because of the casualty of it. However, many researchers have shown that this generation has better writing skills than ever. One of these researchers is Clive Thompson, who has been fascinated with technology since he was just a kid. Thompson has been a long-time writer for the New York Times Magazine and focuses on writing about digital technologies and their social and cultural impact. He argues in his essay, "Public Thinking", from his book, Smarter Than You Think, that the internet is absolutely responsible for this general increase in cognitive behavior. He claims that the publicness of our writings has improved the way we think. He supports this by bringing up statistics, personal experiences, and examples of other people. In this paper, I will analyze Thompson’s main arguments and how he goes about supporting them. In addition to examining his good arguments, I will also examine his weaker points and where he could have improved his support.

Walking around an average college campus, one sees almost everyone on his or her phone texting, tweeting, or emailing. Clive Thompson insists that all of these small tasks add up to a surprising amount of writing. Thompson’s first supporting claim is that this generation writes more than any other before. Briefly, he insists that “the internet has produced a foaming Niagara of writing”(46). Just like each water drop in the Niagara Falls helps to create one of the biggest and most powerful waterfalls in the world, each word that a person writes is a small part of a larger mass. In order to explain this increase of writing production, he shows research about American literacy done by a scholar named Deborah Brandt. In the past, “Brandt notes, writing was something you did mostly for work, serving an industrial purpose and not personal passions”(50). However, Thompson summarizes Brandt again, now “in our own time, we’re also writing a stunning amount of material about things we’re simply interested in—our hobbies, our friends, weird things we’ve read or seen online, sports, current events, last night’s episode of our favorite TV show”(51). Writing has become less of a task, and more of a social tool and hobby.  It is much easier to write more when you are doing it optionally and enjoy the topic, rather than writing because you need to for a job or school. People write for entertainment now because, compared to the past, others can much more easily read, respond, and start a conversation that is interesting to the author and reader.

Just because people are writing more, does not necessarily mean that they are writing better. Although, according to Thompson, the internet has actually improved this generation’s writing skills due to something called the “audience effect”. Similarly to giving a speech or performing in front of an audience, this effect causes people to think about what they are doing, because they know somebody will be seeing and judging it. When writing and creating an argument, one will tend to make it stronger when he or she knows that somebody will be reading it and can easily tear apart a weak argument. We see examples of this everyday. When writing a post on Facebook or posting on a public blog, almost anyone can comment on it and critique it. Thompson says that this causes people to think more carefully about what they’re writing and create a stronger and more planned out argument. Thompson gives an example of of what bloggers frequently tell him. They tell him that they start to write on their blogs, “but pretty soon they think about the fact that someone’s going to read this as soon as it’s posted. And suddenly all the weak points in their argument, their cliches and lazy, autofill thinking, become painfully obvious”(52). When posting something on the internet, one realizes that almost anybody can see it. A future employer, a family member, or friend can easily search for or stumble upon the post. This will probably cause the author to think about how professional and appropriate their writing is and in a broader sense, cause them to think about how their actions can affect their future and relationships. For example, Gabriel Weinberg, a founder for a search engine meant for protecting user privacy, says that “Even if I was publishing it[his blog] to no one, it’s just the threat of an audience. If someone could come across it under my name, I have to take it more seriously”(54).  Although this is an argument that doesn’t need much convincing, Thompson backs it up more with research from sources such as Vanderbilt University professors and Sir Francis Bacon rather than only some unnamed bloggers. 

A popular counter-argument is that today’s technology has lowered teens’ grammar and spelling due to informal texting and IM language. However, Thompson explains why it actually has the opposite effect. He uses research done by a Stanford University English professor, Andrea Lunsford.Her research supports that using IM acronyms such as “LOL” have made almost no negative impacts on today’s writings(66). Thompson explains how others’ research shows that “one analyzed 1.5 million words from instant messages by teens and found that there, only 3 percent of the words used were IM-style short forms”(66). He suggests that the amount of writing done via instant messaging has a much more powerful impact than the type of writing done. In fact, using these acronyms and other casual talk in social situations is actually helpful.   We have learned to change tone and sophistication based on who we are writing to or the context of the work, which is a very valuable life skill. Thompson uses a mixture of reliable resources and relatable subjects to help support his argument. Hearing statistics about texting is much easier to connect to than statistics about writing books. 

The theory of multiples is another idea that Thompson brings up. He explains how the internet has created a revolutionary network of ideas. In the past, multiple people would discover the same thing without knowing another already had. Thompson uses historical examples of scientists rediscovering the same thing because they were not in contact(60-61).With the internet, people can share ideas and bounce ideas off of each other. Reading articles or a blog that are interesting to you can help to spark new ideas. When you comment on these articles or posts, you may start a chain of new ideas that spreads throughout the world. If interested in a subject, one can easily just google it and most likely find a website for that subject. When he or she does so, they now have access to information that others had previously posted. With this, the person does not have to rediscover said information and can then spend his or her time on expanding the idea and possibly discovering something further on their own. It becomes a chain effect of expanding research and knowledge on almost any subject that you can think of. 

In conclusion, Thompson makes a good argument about how the internet is helpful to improve this generation’s cognitive behavior. However, he fails to acknowledge many factors  that might show how the internet is harmful to thinking. Some questions that popped into my head as I read Thompson’s essay remain unanswered. Although we do have such easy access to the internet today, the smartphones that many people are using to do so limit the full potential to do something great. On a smartphone, one may write frequently, however, it is usually just a casual text or email. Is the easy access to google making people more reliant on technology than memorized knowledge? Does using easy access to others’ works on the internet cause unoriginality? Although Thompson does a good job of analyzing the general use of internet, he does not go into enough detail of the way it is being accessed. 

Works Cited

Thompson, Clive. “Public Thinking”. Smarter Than You Think. Penguin Press. Sept. 12, 2013.

Rough Draft

Ally Ferrell

Professor Werry

RWS 100

September 22, 2014

Rough Draft

With the increasing prominence of technology in the past few decades, the internet has become just as much of a writing tool as a pencil and paper are. The real question here though is, is this tool actually improving writing? Many researchers have shown that this generation has better writing skills than ever. One of these researchers is Clive Thompson, who has been fascinated with technology since he was just a kid. Thompson studied poetry and political science at the University of Toronto and has been a long-time writer for the New York Times Magazine. He argues in his essay, "Public Thinking", from his book, Smarter Than You Think, that the internet is absolutely responsible for this general increase in writing ability.  He claims that the internet is responsible for a change in cognitive behavior. He supports this by bringing up statistics, personal experiences, and examples of other people. In this paper, I will analyze Thompson’s main arguments and how he goes about supporting them. In addition to examining his good arguments, I will also examine his weaker points and where he could have improved his support.

Walking around an average college campus, one see’s almost everyone on his or her phone texting, tweeting, or emailing. Clive Thompson insists that all of these small tasks add up to a surprising amount of writing. Thompson’s first supporting claim is that the internet, and technology in general, have caused people to write more than any generation has before. And of course, with practice comes more skill. Briefly, he insists that “the internet has produced a foaming Niagara of writing”(46). Just like each water drop in the Niagara Falls helps to create one of the biggest and most powerful waterfalls in the world, each word that a person writes is a small part of a larger mass. In order to help the reader grasp how much the internet has actually increased our writing, Thompson reports some shocking statistics:

Each day, we compose 154 billion emails, more than 500 million tweets on Twitter, and over 1 million blog post and 1.3 million blog comments on WordPress alone. On Facebook, we write about 16 billion words per day. That’s just in the United States: in China, it’s 100 million updates each day on Sina Wiebo, the country’s most popular microblogging tool, and millions more on social networks in other languages worldwide, including Russia’s VK. Text messages are terse, but globally they’re our most frequent piece of writing: 12 billion per day(47).

Thompson uses this evidence to cause the reader to realize how much we really write. He uses examples that his readers will likely relate to; so rather than saying how many books are written in a year, he estimates how many tweets are written in a day. However, Thompson does not give a source to where he found these numbers, which makes this evidence less credible and makes the argument weaker. He says that he calculated these numbers himself, but him being a poetry major does not make it very convincing that these are accurate statistics. 

A popular counter-argument is that today’s technology has lowered teens’ grammar and spelling due to informal texting and IM language. However, Thompson explains why it actually has the opposite effect. He uses research done by a Stanford University English professor, Andrea Lunsford.Her research supports that using IM acronyms such as “LOL” have made almost no impact on today’s writings(66). Thompson explains how others’ research shows that “one analyzed 1.5 million words from instant messages by teens and found that there, only 3 percent of the words used were IM-style short forms”(66). He suggests that the amount of writing done via instant messaging has a much more powerful impact than the type of writing done. Thompson uses a mixture of reliable resources and relatable subjects to help support his argument. Hearing statistics about texting is much easier to connect to than statistics about writing books.

The theory of multiples is another idea that Thompson brings up. He explains how the internet has created a revolutionary network of ideas. In the past, multiple people would discover the same thing without knowing of the other. Thompson uses historical examples of scientists rediscovering the same thing because they were not in contact(60-61).With the internet, people can share ideas and bounce ideas off of each other. Reading articles or a blog that are interesting to you can help to spark new ideas. When you comment on these articles or posts, you may start a chain of new ideas that spreads throughout the world.

According to Thompson, the internet has improved this generation’s writing skills due to something called the “audience effect”. This effect causes people to think about what they are writing, because they know somebody will be reading it. When writing and creating an argument, one will tend to make it stronger when he or she knows that somebody will be reading it and can easily tear apart a weak argument. We see examples of this everyday. When writing a post on Facebook or posting on a public blog, almost anyone can comment on it and critique it. Thompson says that this causes people to think more carefully about what they’re writing and create a stronger and more planned out argument. Thompson gives an example of of what bloggers frequently tell him. They tell him that they start to write on their blogs, “but pretty soon they think about the fact that someone’s going to read this as soon as it’s posted. And suddenly all the weak points in their argument, their cliches and lazy, autofill thinking, become painfully obvious”(52).  Although, this is an argument that doesn’t need much evidence to be convincing, he doesn't give much concrete evidence, just a vague description of what some unnamed bloggers told him. Thompson also does not bring up any counter arguments, like how the anonymity of the internet could affect how people write towards others..

Another idea that Thompson claims is that the internet helps to clarify thinking. What he means by this is that when one writes, it helps him or her to truly understand their thoughts and possible become up with some new ones. Thompson quotes Cecil Day-Lewis, “We do not write in order to be understood; we write in order to understand”(51). He uses a quote from Day-Lewis because he is a very famous poet that is obviously knowledgable about writing and should be considered very credible in the context of writing. A good example of this would be this essay. There is no way I could think of 5 pages worth of ideas and commentary off the bat, but as I write, the ideas come pouring out. It is much easier to expand on ideas when they are written out and you are forced to put them into words. 

To help bring all of his claims together, Thompson tells a story of a Kenyan girl named Ory Okolloh who started her own blog about Kenyan politics(45-46). Her story gives examples of the audience effect, clarifying thinking, and all of Thompson’s other sub-claims. This helps his  overall argument because it gives real life examples of his claims that can be related to. Okolloh is just a normal girl that greatly improved her writing by using the internet. This story helps to bring all of Thompson’s claims together and make it an overall more convincing argument.

In conclusion, Thompson makes a good argument about how the internet is helpful to improve this generation’s cognitive behavior. However, he fails to acknowledge any counter arguments that might say how the internet is harmful to this generation’s writing skills. He doesn't mention the affect that anonymity or the ease of plagiarism have on today’s writers. Also, Thompson doesn't mention any other factors that may have improved today’s average writing skills. It is very much possible that the education system has improved or that the general enjoyment of writing has increased. Thompson seems to give all of the credit for better cognitive skills, even though it might deserve some blame in decreasing the skill while outside forces are the cause of improvement.

Body Paragraph edited

Walking around an average college campus, one see’s almost everyone on his or her phone texting, tweeting, or emailing. Clive Thompson insists that all of these small tasks add up to a surprising amount of writing. Thompson’s first supporting claim is that the internet, and technology in general, have caused people to write more than any generation has before. And of course, with practice comes more skill. Briefly, he insists that “the internet has produced a foaming Niagara of writing”(46). Just like each water drop in the Niagara Falls helps to create one of the biggest and most powerful waterfalls in the world, each word that a person writes is a small part of a larger mass. In order to help the reader grasp how much the internet has actually increased our writing, Thompson reports some shocking statistics:

Each day, we compose 154 billion emails, more than 500 million tweets on Twitter, and over 1 million blog post and 1.3 million blog comments on WordPress alone. On Facebook, we write about 16 billion words per day. That’s just in the United States: in China, it’s 100 million updates each day on Sina Wiebo, the country’s most popular microblogging tool, and millions more on social networks in other languages worldwide, including Russia’s VK. Text messages are terse, but globally they’re our most frequent piece of writing: 12 billion per day(47).

Thompson uses this evidence to cause the reader to realize how much we really write. He uses examples that his readers will likely relate to; so rather than saying how many books are written in a year, he estimates how many tweets are written in a day. However, Thompson does not give a source to where he found these numbers, which makes this evidence less credible and makes the argument weaker. He says that he calculated these numbers himself, but him being a poetry major does not make it very convincing that these are accurate statistics.

Edited Body Paragraph

Walking around an average college campus, one see’s almost everyone on his or her phone texting, tweeting, or emailing. Clive Thompson insists that these small tasks add up. Thompson’s first supporting claim is that the internet, and technology in general, have caused people to write more than any generation has before. And of course, with practice comes more skill. Briefly, he suggests that “the internet has produced a foaming Niagra of writing”(46). He uses the word ‘Niagra’ because it is one of the most well-known and largest waterfalls with extreme power and force. In order to help the reader grasp how much the internet has increased our writing, Thompson reports some shocking statistics:

         Each day, we compose 154 billion emails, more than 500 million tweets on Twitter, and over 1 million blog post and 1.3 million blog comments on WordPress alone. On Facebook, we write about 16 billion words per day. That’s just in the United States: in China, it’s 100 million updates each day on Sina Wiebo, the country’s most popular microblogging tool, and millions more on social networks in other languages worldwide, including Russia’s VK. Text messages are terse, but globally they’re our most frequent piece of writing: 12 billion per day(47).

Thompson uses this evidence to cause the reader to realize how much we really write. He uses examples that his readers will likely relate to; so rather than saying how many books are written in a year, he estimates how many tweets are written in a day. However, Thompson does not give a source to where he found these numbers, which makes this evidence less credible and makes the argument weaker. He says that he calculated these numbers himself, but him being a poetry major does not convince me that these are accurate statistics.

Essay Intro/1st Body Paragraph Draft

Ally Ferrell

Professor Werry

RWS 100

September 8, 2014

Intro Paragraph/First Body Paragraph

    Ally Ferrell

Professor Werry

RWS 100

September 8, 2014

Intro Paragraph/1st Body paragraph

With the increasing prominence of technology in the past few decades, the internet has become just as much of a writing tool as a pencil and paper are. The real question here though is, is this tool actually improving writing? Many researchers have shown that this generation has better writing skills than ever. One of these researchers is Clive Thompson, who has been fascinated with technology since he was just a kid. Thompson studied poetry and political science at the University of Toronto and has been a long-time writer for the New York Times Magazine. He explains in his essay, "Public Thinking", from his book, Smarter Than You Think, that the internet is absolutely responsible for this general increase in writing ability.  He claims that the internet is responsible for a change in cognitive behavior. He supports this by bringing up statistics, personal experiences, and examples of other people. In this paper, I will analyze Thompson’s main arguments and how he goes about supporting them. In addition to examining his good arguments, I will also examine his weak points and where he could have improved his 

support.

Walking aroung an average college campus, one see’s almost everyone on his or her phone texting, tweeting, or emailing. Clive Thompson says that these things add up. Thompson’s first supporting claim is that the internet, and technology in general, has caused people to write more than any generation has before. And of course, with practice comes more skill. Briefly, he explains that “the internet has produced a foaming Niagra of writing”(46). He uses the word ‘Niagra’ because it is one of the most well-known and largest waterfalls with extreme power and force. In order to help the reader grasp how much the internet has increased our writing, he reports some shocking statistics:

               Each day, we compose 154 billion emails, more than 500 million tweets on Twitter, and over 1 million blog post and 1.3               

million blog comments on WordPress alone. On Facebook, we write about 16 billion words per day. That’s just in the United States: in China, it’s 100 million updates each day on Sina Wiebo, the country’s most popular microblogging tool, and millions more on social networks in other languages worldwide, including Russia’s VK. Text messages are terse, but globally they’re our most frequent piece of writing: 12 billion per day(47).

Thompson uses this evidence to cause the reader to realize how much we really write. He uses examples that his readers will likely relate to; so rather than saying how many books are written in a year, he estimates how many tweets are written in a day. However, Thompson does not give a source to where he found these numbers, which makes this evidence less credible and makes the argument weaker. He says that he calculated these numbers himself, but him being a poetry major does not convince me that these are accurate statistics.

Exploring Thompson

Ally Ferrell

RWS 100

Werry Section 27

5 September, 2014

Exploring Thompson

Thompson makes a great argument in his essay, “Public Thinking”, but he seems to leave a few questions unanswered. The first question that I would like to hear his input on is, is technology the only reason writing has advanced so much in the past few decades? Thompson explains thoroughly how the internet has increased students’ writing abilities. However, he does not mention the possibility that the public school system has increased in rigor and expectations. It’s very clear that the internet has some affect on today’s written works, but it is hard to believe that it’s the only reason. Another question that I feel Thompson fails to answer completely, or at all, is what are the negative effects of the internet and other technology have on today’s writers. I personally can think of many ways that the sharing works and writing for an audience could worsen a piece of writing.

One of Thompson’s arguments that I found extremely persuasive is the fact that with this relatively new technology, people, especially teenagers, are writing much more than past generations. Things like Twitter, blogs, texting, emails, posting comments and replying to other’s posts may seem like just a few words at a time, but those words add up. Thompson tells a story about a Kenyan blogger who claimed that she could never write an entire book, but then realized that she had a compilation of about two telephone books worth of blog posts(page 46). If one put together all of a teenager’s tweets, texts, and other various minuscule writing tasks , it would be shocking to see how much she or he had written in just a year or possibly even a week. I also found Thompson’s personal story of his mother to be particularly convincing. He explains how she grew up in the era before technology, and that even though she was well-written and the postal service was convenient, she only wrote about four letters each year. The convenience and small amount of time it takes to write an email or text compared to a hand-written letter has made it much less of a hassle to send messages. However, what made the essay as a whole less persuasive as a whole to me was that Thompson does not acknowledge any opposing views. It makes me believe that he does not have a strong enough evidence to even attempt to refute these  other arguments.

Thompson opens up his essay with a story of a Kenyan woman who actively posted on her online blog. I think he does this for a few different reasons. The first one would be that it is easy for the readers of this essay to connect with her. She started out as an American student who had difficulties getting her words onto paper at first. She didn't realize how much she was actually writing through her blog just like many of us don’t realize how much we write when we text, tweet, or comment on YouTube videos. The second reason he uses this story is because it contains examples of all of his claims throughout the essay. It shows the effects of having an audience, clarifying thinking, and the idea of networking. In just one short story, he is able to prove that these effects exist. 

Response to Thompson's "Public Thinking"

Ally Ferrell

Professor Werry

RWS 100

3 September 2014

Response to Thompson’s Public Thinking

     In his essay Public Thinking, Clive Thompson is attempting to answer one of the biggest    

questions of modern day writing, which is “how does the internet affect today’s written works 

and society as a whole”? Thompson reports “Before the Internet came along, most people rarely 

wrote anything at all for pleasure or intellectual satisfaction after graduating from high school or 

college”(48). According to him, the internet has greatly changed the attitude about writing from a 

chore to a hobby which in turn has changed writing into a more useful and practiced resource. 

His answer, succinctly, is that the internet has improved the quality, amount, and spread of 

written works.

     When somebody writes something that will be posted on the internet, he or she now has 

an audience. Thompson’s first supporting claim to his main argument is that having an 

“audience”, or a group of people reading a person’s work, causes the author to write more 

carefully and with much more evidence because he or she now probably has critics who will 

refute a weak argument. Thompson argues this personal experience in his essay :

    Bloggers frequently tell me that they'll get an idea for a blog post and sit down at the keyboard in a state of excitement, ready to pour their words forth. But pretty soon they think about the fact that someone's going to read this as soon as it's posted. And suddenly all the weak points in their argument, their cliches and lazy, autofill thinking, become painfully obvious.(52)

Having more carefully though out arguments out there helps to create more sophisticated counter 

arguments and spark new ideas.

     Thompson’s second supporting claim is that the internet has made writing a much more 

common practice. He reports the statistics “Each day, we compose 154 billion e-mails, more than 

500 million tweets on Twitter, and over 1 million blog posts and 1.3 million blog comments on 

WordPress alone. On Facebook, we write about 16 billion words per day. That's just in the 

United States”(46-47). Although these are not usually formal or very long posts, they add up to a 

lot more writing than was done before the internet. Thompson recounts that his mother that grew 

up in the age before the internet, only wrote a few letters a year, much like most people from her 

generation. Even a small and casual comment, tweet, or e-mail helps the author practice putting 

his or her words onto paper, which can be very difficult to some.

     Another supporting argument from Thompson is that the internet has greatly improved the 

collaboration and spread of information. He gives examples, or perhaps counterexamples, of how  

many scientific discoveries were discovered multiple times without the others’  knowledge 

(58-59).  With the internet, this is far less likely to happen because when a scientist, for example, 

posts his or her progress or discoveries, other scientists are able to collaborate or build off  of the 

others work so he or she doesn't have to repeat it. The accessibility to written works due to the 

internet has helped with the general progress in our society.