Thursday, October 28, 2010

Summary -- Section 1

Section 1 of the Dumbest Generation went through a variety of statistics on how the Y generation isn't living up to the generation before them. It goes into detail about how the "under 30" group doesn't know the things their parents did and are losing touch with reality because of all this modern technology.



The book starts by talking about the Jaywalking portion of the Jay Leno show. This is where Jay finds random young people on the street and asks them historical and political questions they are not likely to know. In my opinion, this is a television show designed to amuse people and it wouldn't be very funny if everyone he asked knew all the questions; that would be more like taking a quiz or watching the history channel.

The book continues with detailed statistics from the National Survey of Student Engagement, American Time Use Survey, and the Survey of Public Participation in the Arts, National Endowment for the Arts showing that the Y generation are failing to engage themselves in school and academic activities. It goes on to say that these young folks are spending too much time watching tv, playing games, using the computer, and socializing.

Mark Bauerlein points out individual areas of concern for the young generation starting with History. He uses the NAEP history exam to state that 57% of high school seniors scored below basic and explaining that only 1% reached advanced. He continues on with specific examples in Civics, Math, Science, Technology, and Fine Arts.

Overall the first section of this book summarizes the Y generation as computer literate while lacking academic excellence due to the growing number of hours spent socializing, playing video games, being on the computer, texting, and using other forms of technology. Although this may be a harsh reality, there is good that can come from the growing 21st century learner.

Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Baby Blogger


I chose this photo as the cover of The Dumbest Generation. I feel it represents the fact that younger and younger generations and kids are using technology and becoming more computer literate while becoming less in touch with facts, history, and politics, etc...

Sunday, October 24, 2010

Book Cover


I found this image at geekandpoke.typepad.com/.../clashofgenera.html using Google image search advanced search options labled for reuse. I selected this image because it illustrates what I have read of the book so far. In reading the book the author outlines negatives of having today's youth so connected to technology, just as this comic jokingly shows a youngster in touch with twitter but out of touch with reality.

Alternative Book Cover

This image, "Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid." Illustration for Charles Kingsley's The Water Babies in charcoal, water, and oil, which I found through google images.com (public domain), appeals to me as a potential cover for our book because technology, like Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid, is overwhelming and feeding our youngest generations. Since I haven't read beyong the introduction I don't know if what is being fed to us is beneficial or not, but the old addage,  "Too much of anything..." would seem to apply. Notice that we can't see her eyes but may only see our own reflections in the glasses she wears. She appears benevolent and yet, she is overpowering in size and strange in appearance.  These feelings are mine when I attempt my first wiki, blog, d2l class and I anticipate they will remain for the next 12 weeks or so while swimming through the waters of the web.

Saturday, October 23, 2010

If I were to pick the cover...



If I were to pick a new cover for Mark Bauerlein's The Dumbest Generation, I would choose this image. Although this image consist mainly of words, it captures the idea of what I perceive this book to be about (considering I haven't started reading it yet). Those of us in the younger generation (the under 30 group as Bauerlein claims) are obsessed with "The Google." We rely on it to answer everything. In fact, to find my image for this assignment I "Googled" creative commons images and went through the pages. What captures me most about this image, though, is the nothing aspect. Google does not provide all the answers, which is the argument for the book.

**********************************************************************************

Upon further reflection, I would actually make this saying be on the t-shirt of a typical adolescent, because as a general rule, t-shirts with quirky sayings on them are quite popular. My book cover image might look something like this:

Friday, October 22, 2010

The Dumbest Generation


Who's that Dude?

I selected the picture of Shakespeare for the book cover The Dumbest Generation because the author, Mark Bauerlein, proposes that today's generation of students addicted to technology is slowly losing their understanding of all things intellectual. I got this copyright free image courtesy of the University of Texas Libraries, The University of Texas at Austin."

Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Kathy's new book cover

Reluctant to Move Fast on Adopting New Technology (photo credit: Robert Thomson via Flickr.com under the Creative Commons liscence 2.0

I chose this picture because it reminds me of how some are scared to use new technologies. Since I have not read The Dumbest Generation yet I don't know whether this fits the book but the picture was humorous.
http://www.silicon.com/i/s4/illo/photos/2009/October/snail%20crossing%road.jpg

Welcome to Literature Circle Two!

Your Super Summarizer schedule is as follows:

Section One--Due October 28, Jennifer Block (McNaughton)
Section Two--Due November 4, Pamela Kringel
Section Three--Due November 11, Ashley Rives
Section Four--Due November 18, Jennifer Roberts
Section Five--Due December 2, Kathy Seymour
Section Six--Due December 9, Paula Vukonich