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We're In the Midst of a Literacy Revolution
Mike Sauter sends in a piece from Wired profiling research by Andrea Lunsford, a professor of writing and rhetoric at Stanford, from which she concludes that we don't need to worry about computers and the Internet causing a decline in general literacy. "[Lunsford] has organized a mammoth project called the Stanford Study of Writing to scrutinize college students' prose. From 2001 to 2006, she collected 14,672 student writing samples — everything from in-class assignments, formal essays, and journal entries to emails, blog posts, and chat sessions. Her conclusions are stirring. 'I think we're in the midst of a literacy revolution the likes of which we haven't seen since Greek civilization,' she says. For Lunsford, technology isn't killing our ability to write. It's reviving it — and pushing our literacy in bold new directions."
I M glad 2 c this iz happening. I wuz so verrrry conserned about teh litteracy levels in r schools.
Now wen pepl complain 2 me abt kitz not bein litterate, it will give me lolz, the suxors.
I remember the iPod Coming out, and I remember owning an MP3 Player before it came out. I remember owning a CD... Player thing... I want to call it a "CD-man" because its a walkman that plays CD's but... whatever.
Point is, Everything that changes Pop Culture today isn't really a breakthrough. Its some technology that existed, was compiled together, and marketted with a flashy appeal.
If you look at the internet as a breakthrough for computers, then you could almost look at Cloud computing as a breakthrough for the internet. If The Cloud really takes off, I think it'll be the closest thing to a revolution I've seen in my lifetime. (Microblogging is NOT a revolution until EVERYONE is doing it, which I hope I do not fall prey to)