Literacy, Technology and Society: Confronting the Issues

"Literacy, Technology, and Society" written by Gail Hawisher and Cynthia Selfe, really confronts the issues of technology. This is a book enriched with articles discussing the different matters of technology. The authors' opinions in these articles vary to the opinions of cited work. While readers go through these articles it will be obvious that the book was designed to help students think critically about articles covering various issues on technology. In my opinion, "Literacy, Technology, and Society " can serve as a good and useful introduction to college students during their earlier years while taking English classes. Most High School students do not do enough readings in English classes and college has definitely higher standards and more requirements that have to be satisfied. The articles presented will satisfy the need for understanding and practicing critical thinking, for both beginners and those who are interested in more knowledge of technology. Regardless of the negativity of some articles due to the complications or understanding such as "Myth information" written by Langdon Winner on page 42. The organization of other articles throw off readers because the paragraphs are not connected. An example is, Common Law for the Electronic Frontier, written by Anne Branscomb on page 315. In some other articles information given by the author was outdated such as in Welcome to Cyberia, written by M. Kadi on page 37. Inaccurate information and lack of citation is another complication such as in Paul Strassmann's article "Information Systems and Literacy" on page 134(show and example here and cite it). Also "Welcome to Cyberia" written by M. Kadi on page 37. Steve Silberman's article "We're Teen, We`re Queer, and We`ve Got E-Mail" on page 58 was not even cited. Finding these negativities about these articles prove that I have been thinking critically while reading them. Some articles really deserve to be read because the issues they discussed are very informative and interesting and some have not been introduced before. "We're Teen, We're Queer, We've Got E-mail" and "Welcome to Cyberia" are examples of this. We're Teen, We're Queer, and We've Got E-mail" is an article written by Steve Silberman. This article shows how homosexual teenagers can benefit from the internet, more precisely by E-mail. Gay teenagers have difficulties expressing themselves and revealing their identities to other people because they fear of being not welcomed. However this article unmasks the kind of people who can be participating online. This point came through a gay teenager's writings :"I would like to write to someone that I can talk to about issues I can't talk about with my friends" (Silverman p.59). In the article, "Welcome to Cyberia", the author informs us about technology and at the same time complains about the cost of entering the cyberspace or internet, and the limited numbers of individuals who choose to spend their free time on line. These two facto

There are many great books that can be used in a college writing class. The book used in my class is "Literacy ,Technology, and Society; Confronting the Issues" by Gail E. Hawisher and Cynthia L. Selfe. It teaches readers to read critically, proves how important organization truly is, and uses different types of language and word choices to show how it affects the writing style. The content of this book helps to teach significant critical reading. Literacy, Society, and Technology (L.T.S.) has all types of writing from the most fine tuned author to an everyday news article. There are articles that have ridiculously advanced vocabulary but the organization is absolutely brutal. This is perfect to teach students how to read article critically. So there vocabulary is pretty large but if none of it makes sense is the article believable? Absolutely not, how do you know that this is not just some person that bought a dictionary and is toying around with writing. There are other examples of articles that are written at a sixth grade level, but with good organization and the strong points they make, in some cases unforgettable points that will stick with you through the entire article. Now don't get me wrong there are some very well written articles from some highly noted authors. The bill of rights is noted and referred to as an example of critical reading and most of these articles directly relate to it. Reading these articles is a great way to teach students to break down articles and really dig deep into what they are saying and at times implying. Its amazing the difference between just reading an article and reading an article critically. Like everything, this book does have some down falls. This book is not an ordinary educational textbook that most classes require. Most books have chapter tests and lots of questions for the students to answer that relate to the articles but this book just barely grazes that issue. It has some questions, like four at the end of each article, but they are all really weak and have nothing to do with critical reading or organization. They ask you to write questions the had to do with the article and other high school oriented questions. The articles have to be looked at in a critical way and that is up to the professor. In my case the professor creates questions purely about critical thinking. And we have discussions about reading the article critically and weak points that we found. There are no chapters test or anything even close to that in this book. There aren't even chapters, its just a bunch of articles that are pieced together perfectly. Another down fall of this book is that it is fairly out dated. Some of the text in this book is from the early nineteen nineties and even date back to the late eighties. In most cases this would be a big deal except for one, technology which isthe main topic of this book. The book deals with internet costs and security issues on the internet that have been dealt with an