Personal Computers Ethos
Since they have been introduced to society, computers have been incorporated into almost every aspect of daily life. Almost every workplace is run by a computer network, transactions at stores and restaurants are done using a computer, cars have computers incorporated into to them to help them run smoothly, and people have even taking in using computers for recreation. Lately, these computers have started to be used in the classroom, replacing the tradition of books, pencils and papers with personal computers. Some people think that this is a great idea, while others are still a little sceptical of the idea that the use of computers has benefits. In “Tech and content TEAM UP,” a mostly informative article in the February edition of District Administration Magazine, Michael Gagne talks about
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different school districts incorporating technology into schools and the benefits that result. In another article, “Five Reasons iPads Should NOT Be In Classrooms,” a persuasive piece in Psychology Today, Susan Greenfield gives five reasons why she thinks that technology is not beneficial to schools. Although both articles are about the same topic, they differ in many ways, including the way they are organized, their use of persuasive language, and their use of ethos.
When first looking at these two articles, the most obvious thing is the way they are both organized. Both articles have a big bolded title with a smaller header explaining the main ideas of the story beneath. This makes sense because both articles are in magazines where they want to grab the reader's attention with a big, flashy title, and they give the subheadings to interest the reader in the topic that will be discussed. Other than that, the two articles’ organization is not very similar. In Gagne’s article, he accompanies the text with many pictures and descriptions. The very first page of the article has a picture of a man watching a child work happily on a laptop that takes up about 50 percent of the page. Below the picture is interesting, relevant information about who the people in the photo are. The purpose of this picture is to intrigue the reader with the people’s happy faces and to have them wonder more about why those faces seem to be so happy, leading them to read on and engage with the piece. It also influences the reader into thinking that
the STAT initiative being explained must be a good thing if a student is enjoying it. Greenfield’s article does not contain any pictures, but instead it uses numbered bolded headings to grab the attention of the reader. The headings are the main topic the is going to be discussed in the paragraph, like “1. There is no evidence they improve learning,” and “4. Onscreen reading is NOT comparable to traditional reading (Greenfield).” The reader naturally looks at the bold headings when they first look at the article. When they see these heading, they can find the topics they are interested in and can read more about it. If they are not interested in one of the topics, they can go ahead and skip to the next reason. These headings are numbered so that this article can be quickly looked over and still be of use, since people can see the reasons and understand those reasons. This differs from Gagne’s article because if a person skipped over part of the article, they would be unable to follow what was happening. The organization of the two articles help show the purpose of them; Greenfield’s piece makes her stance clear by making her points obvious and easy to see, while Gagne’s article is understood as informative as it resembles a newspaper in the way it is written. Since Gagne’s article was not meant to be persuasive and Greenfield’s was, the two differ greatly in their use of persuasive language. Gagne, even though he does not say it directly, thinks that the schools he is reporting on are doing a good job. It is possible to see his point of view because of the way he says certain things, like the description at the beginning of the article. It reads “Setting educators loose on digital playground allows districts to move beyond textbooks (Gagne).” The way he says this shows his positive outlook on the outcome of these districts. He would not have said allow to move beyond if he did not think that the digital playgrounds were better than the books. He could have said plainly “Schools replace books with computers,” or if he was on the other side of the issue, “Schools are throwing away books to let children run rampant on a digital playground.” While none of these explicitly say whether or not computers are better than traditional learning, it can still be understood how the person who wrote them feels. By writing what he did the way he did it, Gagne influences the reader to think positively about the districts integrating technology into their curriculums without actually telling them what he thinks. Another example of his passive language can be found in a caption to one of the pictures in the article. Gagne states “A young student get comfortable at Church Lane Elementary School as he diligently works on his HP laptop… (Gagne).” By talking about the success of this one child in a school system, the author makes the reader think that every student will be working diligently like the one child is. This is where Greenfield’s piece differs from Gagne’s greatly. Instead of passively suggesting that her point of view is correct like Gagne does, Greenfield makes it clear to the reader exactly what she thinks about the subject, and she is targeting an audience that disagrees with her, unlike Gagne. The very first sentence of the article reads like this: “There is growing backlash against iPads in the classroom, as there remains no evidence that they help learning, and some experts even argue they could have a negative effect (Greenfield).” She does not try to hide her point of view while she is trying to persuade the reader. Her language in this sentence is also very effective at convincing the reader that iPads should not be used, because she makes the reader feel as if they would be dumb if they thought iPads were a viable learning tool. She does this by stating that there remains no evidence that they help learning. Only a stupid person would support something with no evidence, so she opens her piece with this sentence to make it clear that an intelligent person will be on her side. Another way she persuades her audience is by appealing to the readers reasoning as she provides factual evidence for all of her claims. When she claims that iPads are distracting, she says that “a consistent finding across several studies was that the iPad could potentially be a distraction as it is associated more with entertainment than education (Greenfield).” Providing concrete evidence right after making her claim that comes from someone who is not her makes her argument seem much more valid than if it were her idea alone. It makes the argument even stronger when the evidence comes from someone credible. Both articles use evidence from people who are very trustworthy and known to be good sources of knowledge so that the reader is more likely to believe what they say. In Gagne’s article, he states “‘Teachers are adding the content and figuring out what works in lessons,’ says Chief Information Officer Matt Federoff (Gagne),” and in Greenfield’s article she states “Unsurprisingly, students vastly prefer the comfort and legibility of reading print,” then follows that with a citation from Oxford University. It can be seen from both of these quotes that both authors are trying to sound better by showing the credibility of the people they are getting the data from. Where these two articles differ in this category is how they try to make themselves appear credible. Gagne does not do this much at all, as he provides no information about himself and his vocabulary is not especially sophisticated. Greenfield, on the other hand, does try to make herself appear credible. Before the reader sees anything else in the article, they see that Susan Greenfield has a Ph.D. This makes the author seem very credible, because people are much more likely to trust a doctor than they are going to trust an average person. She also uses more advanced vocabulary to make her seem even smarter. For example, she says “Schools from Kindergartens to colleges became voracious consumers of these beautifully designed and ingenious devices…” when she could have just stated that schools started to use iPads. Even though these two articles are very different in many ways, they are still both effective at fulfilling their respective purposes. “Tech and content TEAM UP” is effective at informing its audience while maybe influencing the readers thoughts a little through its word choice and organization, and “Five Reasons iPads Should NOT Be In Classrooms” is effective at persuading its audience through its persuasive arguments and appeals to credibility. Both of these articles would be usable in an argumentative piece, but the one written by Greenfield would be much more effective, since it provides arguments and lots of justification for those arguments, while the one written by Gagne mostly contain simple information about the topic.
different school districts incorporating technology into schools and the benefits that result. In another article, “Five Reasons iPads Should NOT Be In Classrooms,” a persuasive piece in Psychology Today, Susan Greenfield gives five reasons why she thinks that technology is not beneficial to schools. Although both articles are about the same topic, they differ in many ways, including the way they are organized, their use of persuasive language, and their use of ethos.
When first looking at these two articles, the most obvious thing is the way they are both organized. Both articles have a big bolded title with a smaller header explaining the main ideas of the story beneath. This makes sense because both articles are in magazines where they want to grab the reader's attention with a big, flashy title, and they give the subheadings to interest the reader in the topic that will be discussed. Other than that, the two articles’ organization is not very similar. In Gagne’s article, he accompanies the text with many pictures and descriptions. The very first page of the article has a picture of a man watching a child work happily on a laptop that takes up about 50 percent of the page. Below the picture is interesting, relevant information about who the people in the photo are. The purpose of this picture is to intrigue the reader with the people’s happy faces and to have them wonder more about why those faces seem to be so happy, leading them to read on and engage with the piece. It also influences the reader into thinking that
the STAT initiative being explained must be a good thing if a student is enjoying it. Greenfield’s article does not contain any pictures, but instead it uses numbered bolded headings to grab the attention of the reader. The headings are the main topic the is going to be discussed in the paragraph, like “1. There is no evidence they improve learning,” and “4. Onscreen reading is NOT comparable to traditional reading (Greenfield).” The reader naturally looks at the bold headings when they first look at the article. When they see these heading, they can find the topics they are interested in and can read more about it. If they are not interested in one of the topics, they can go ahead and skip to the next reason. These headings are numbered so that this article can be quickly looked over and still be of use, since people can see the reasons and understand those reasons. This differs from Gagne’s article because if a person skipped over part of the article, they would be unable to follow what was happening. The organization of the two articles help show the purpose of them; Greenfield’s piece makes her stance clear by making her points obvious and easy to see, while Gagne’s article is understood as informative as it resembles a newspaper in the way it is written. Since Gagne’s article was not meant to be persuasive and Greenfield’s was, the two differ greatly in their use of persuasive language. Gagne, even though he does not say it directly, thinks that the schools he is reporting on are doing a good job. It is possible to see his point of view because of the way he says certain things, like the description at the beginning of the article. It reads “Setting educators loose on digital playground allows districts to move beyond textbooks (Gagne).” The way he says this shows his positive outlook on the outcome of these districts. He would not have said allow to move beyond if he did not think that the digital playgrounds were better than the books. He could have said plainly “Schools replace books with computers,” or if he was on the other side of the issue, “Schools are throwing away books to let children run rampant on a digital playground.” While none of these explicitly say whether or not computers are better than traditional learning, it can still be understood how the person who wrote them feels. By writing what he did the way he did it, Gagne influences the reader to think positively about the districts integrating technology into their curriculums without actually telling them what he thinks. Another example of his passive language can be found in a caption to one of the pictures in the article. Gagne states “A young student get comfortable at Church Lane Elementary School as he diligently works on his HP laptop… (Gagne).” By talking about the success of this one child in a school system, the author makes the reader think that every student will be working diligently like the one child is. This is where Greenfield’s piece differs from Gagne’s greatly. Instead of passively suggesting that her point of view is correct like Gagne does, Greenfield makes it clear to the reader exactly what she thinks about the subject, and she is targeting an audience that disagrees with her, unlike Gagne. The very first sentence of the article reads like this: “There is growing backlash against iPads in the classroom, as there remains no evidence that they help learning, and some experts even argue they could have a negative effect (Greenfield).” She does not try to hide her point of view while she is trying to persuade the reader. Her language in this sentence is also very effective at convincing the reader that iPads should not be used, because she makes the reader feel as if they would be dumb if they thought iPads were a viable learning tool. She does this by stating that there remains no evidence that they help learning. Only a stupid person would support something with no evidence, so she opens her piece with this sentence to make it clear that an intelligent person will be on her side. Another way she persuades her audience is by appealing to the readers reasoning as she provides factual evidence for all of her claims. When she claims that iPads are distracting, she says that “a consistent finding across several studies was that the iPad could potentially be a distraction as it is associated more with entertainment than education (Greenfield).” Providing concrete evidence right after making her claim that comes from someone who is not her makes her argument seem much more valid than if it were her idea alone. It makes the argument even stronger when the evidence comes from someone credible. Both articles use evidence from people who are very trustworthy and known to be good sources of knowledge so that the reader is more likely to believe what they say. In Gagne’s article, he states “‘Teachers are adding the content and figuring out what works in lessons,’ says Chief Information Officer Matt Federoff (Gagne),” and in Greenfield’s article she states “Unsurprisingly, students vastly prefer the comfort and legibility of reading print,” then follows that with a citation from Oxford University. It can be seen from both of these quotes that both authors are trying to sound better by showing the credibility of the people they are getting the data from. Where these two articles differ in this category is how they try to make themselves appear credible. Gagne does not do this much at all, as he provides no information about himself and his vocabulary is not especially sophisticated. Greenfield, on the other hand, does try to make herself appear credible. Before the reader sees anything else in the article, they see that Susan Greenfield has a Ph.D. This makes the author seem very credible, because people are much more likely to trust a doctor than they are going to trust an average person. She also uses more advanced vocabulary to make her seem even smarter. For example, she says “Schools from Kindergartens to colleges became voracious consumers of these beautifully designed and ingenious devices…” when she could have just stated that schools started to use iPads. Even though these two articles are very different in many ways, they are still both effective at fulfilling their respective purposes. “Tech and content TEAM UP” is effective at informing its audience while maybe influencing the readers thoughts a little through its word choice and organization, and “Five Reasons iPads Should NOT Be In Classrooms” is effective at persuading its audience through its persuasive arguments and appeals to credibility. Both of these articles would be usable in an argumentative piece, but the one written by Greenfield would be much more effective, since it provides arguments and lots of justification for those arguments, while the one written by Gagne mostly contain simple information about the topic.