Thursday February 26, 2015

Honors 9- Today I worked with students individually on their themes for their Type 3 writing.

English 10- Today we covered bibliography expectations for the article project. Here are some resources for students to use:

https://owl.english.purdue.edu/

www.citationmachine.net

www.easybib.com

We then worked on the "missing pieces" article project.  Here is what it looks like:

Directions: Read the following excerpt from this article. You will need to evaluate the argument that is provided and decide if the article is leaning for or against cell phone use. Your mission is to write an introduction paragraph--creating a new title, attention grabber and claim. Then, you need to write a conclusion summarizing the claim and ending with an insight. Finally, write a paragraph describing the evidence or things this author could add to the piece to strengthen their claim.

Positive Effects on Teenagers

“Cell phones provide a sense of security for teenagers as well as their parents,” is one of the prominent arguments that is put forth by those in favor of cell phones. You will seldom come across someone who doesn't understand the importance of cell phones or who hasn't used his/her cell phone in times of emergency. It is this convenience of reaching each other, both for teens and their parents in emergency situations, which makes cell phone one of the most important devices in the world today. At the same time, the recently launched handsets with GPS on board are also of great help, considering that the parents can now keep a track of their child's whereabouts by tracing his cell phone in real time. Not to forget, cell phones have also given a boost to social networking by giving teenagers the ability to reach out to more people.

Negative Effects on Teenagers

While terms like safety and connectedness may give the rising trend of cell phone use by teenagers a “thumbs up,” there are quite a few negative aspects of the same which have put it under the scanner of late. For instance, studies reveal that those teenagers who are addicted to cell phones are prone to sleep disturbances, anxiety and depression. Other than these psychological problems, the use of cell phones is also known to come heavy on our eyes and thumb in form of repetitive strain injuries - which are similar to those injuries that are caused as a result of using the computer for extended hours on a regular basis. Even though the researchers are divided on this, there do exist some studies which associate cell phone use with brain tumor and low sperm count. While cell phones may improve socialization for teenagers, it restricts the kind of people that these teens come across and widens the gap between them and their parents.

Distracted driving is by far the worst of the various negative effects of using a cell phone, with thousands of accidents - mainly those involving teenagers, being attributed to the very trend of attending calls or texting while driving. At the same time, the critics also highlight the fact that the device which was predominantly devised for communication and entertainment is also being used for a lot more than that of late, and accessing pornography is just one of these activities. Initially, it was the computer that was the main source of banned pornographic material for teenagers, but the advent of multimedia cell phones has made it a lot easier for these teens to access pornographic material which ethically they shouldn't. Similarly, sexual harassment in form of sexting - sending lewd messages, or making porn videos and circulating them, is also on rise. While cyber bullying has been one of the most talked about issues related to Internet use, a relatively new but similar concept referred to as 'text bullying' is slowly gaining steam especially in school environment.

Note: Article project is due March 6th.

We will be in the 242 computer lab Monday March 2 and Tuesday March 3.

I will be available to use the journalism computer lab and printer after school on these days. Please sign up with me if you want to utilize this time. Remember, you have had plenty of time to figure out how to get this project typed and turned in.