Reading Response Feb 6

Brandt Summary
In her article, Sponsors of Literacy, Deborah Brandt relies on her interviews she constructed ranging from 1900 to 1980 regarding the histories of writers and readers from Wisconsin. All her interviewees are from different backgrounds, ages, and class ranks. She backs up her reasoning with statistics proving that "unequal conditions of literacy sponsorship lie behind differential outcomes in academic performance."

1. She defines literacy sponsor as agents, local or distant, concrete or abstract, who teach, model, support, recruit, extort, deny, or suppress literacy and gain advantage by it in some way. The characteristics of a literacy sponsor are wealthy, sometimes religious-especially early in the 19th century, and normally knowledgeable.
3. The sponsored "misappropriate" their literacy lessons because they don't take into account the poor students who have limited access, compared to those upper and middle-class students.
4. Brandt uses the term stratified as meaning arranging in a status level. She is referring to stakes as something that stops or limits someone.

AEI
Growing up my primary literacy sponsors were my family, teachers, and athletic teams. My family taught me religious and civic priorities, my teachers helped me with academics, and my teammates and coaches taught me unity as one and pride. Yes I think these sponsors were adequate. I never had access to other religious books, which limited my knowledge and understanding of other people's views.

Response
This article was a little hard to comprehend at first, but as I read more of it I understood how literacy sponsors don't take into account the lower class children that don't have as much access to readings. This is unfortunate and results in lower academic ratings for schools. I agree with Brandt's overall view on this matter.

Baron Summary
In his article, From Pencils to Pixels: The stages of Literacy Technologies, Dennis Baron argues the possibility of computers making us lazy, rather than expanding our knowledge about writing and reading. He describes the main stages of new technologies and the impact they have had on the literacy of our generation. He also states that the pencil is not that much different than the computer.

2. I agree that it is hard to imagine that new technologies are changing the shape or nature of writing is one of his messages in this paper. However I do not agree with him because I feel like these new technologies are definitely causing people to not read or write as much as they have in the past.
4. I think the typewriter was once seen as literacy technology, but is barely seen as one now. These technologies have helped speed up the process of writing.
6. The images and illustration contribute to the thought that new technologies have hindered the overall knowledge of humans. The monkey on the computer definitely supports this idea. I understand them as writing because they show how computer text is easier to compose. Yes, by considering them writing, the list of technologies associated with literacy gets larger.

Response
I really enjoyed reading this article because I completely agree with Baron and it made me see technologies as limiting the overall thought process. I think technologies are great because they make everything easier, however, they don't help us become smarter. Growing up with all these new technologies, has made me accustom to using them to make academics easier and without them I think our generation would be lost.