Sharpless 1

Hannah Sharpless Professor Gretchen Pratt English 1102 Date due 3/12/13 Annotated Bibliography Ashburner, Jill, Jenny Ziviani, and Ana Pennington. "The Introduction Of Keyboarding To Children With Autism Spectrum Disorders With Handwriting Difficulties: A Help Or A Hindrance?." Australasian Journal Of Special Education 36.1 (2012): 32-61. ERIC. Web. 12 Mar. 2013. This article talked about a study conducted to explore the effects in using keyboarding as an alternative to handwriting for students with Autism Spectrum Disorders who have difficulties writing by hand. The study used twenty-two students with ASD whom were given portable word processors to use in the classroom to overcome these difficulties with handwriting. The study measured students motivation, speed, ability, and preferences of keyboard use versus handwriting. Teacher, student, and parent questionnaires indicated the students motivation levels were generally much higher for the portable word processors over handwriting. Overall, keyboarding was effective in helping students to overcome several obstacles experienced while handwriting, with legibility being most significant. This article was published in the Australasian Journal of Special Education by Australian Academic Press. The Australasian Journal of Special Education publishes articles

specifically designed for those professionally active or interested in the education of students with special needs or in the education of those who will work with these students. The author of this article, Jill Ashburners doctoral study focused on the emotional and end educational outcomes of students with Autism Spectrum Disorders. She is currently a manager at Autism Queensland Inc. and has been awarded several grants to conduct studies focusing on sensory processing, auditory processing, occupational therapy, and keyboarding. This article offered me an alternative perspective on my research topic. Most of the research I have done so far talked about technology in a negative sense in terms of the effects it has had on the value of handwriting. This article used a very interesting approach to incorporate a positive outcome of technology on handwriting. I would not have thought to include this in my research paper until I found this article, and this has encouraged me to do further research on the use of technology by people with writing/learning disabilities. It also encouraged me to look for additional ways where technology has been seen as having a positive effect on the way we value handwriting outside of people with disabilities. This article made me wonder just how many people arent able to communicate through writing at all without the use of technology. I would love to continue exploring more research surrounding these topics. Herbert Heuer, et al. "The Death Of Handwriting: Secondary Effects Of Frequent Computer Use On Basic Motor Skills." Journal Of Motor Behavior 43.3 (2011): 247-251. SPORTDiscus with Full Text. Web. 12 Mar. 2013.

The main idea issued in this article was that not only does handwriting suffer because of the growing use of technology, but basic motor skills and basic human skills as well. Frequent computer use is associated with a decreased use of handwriting in everyday life. This article describes several studies done to test this theory. One test done to assess the motor skill of controlled smooth arm-hand movements by using line tracing resulted in younger participants being extremely slower than older ones, and taking about eight times longer to perform the task compared to those of the same age group from a sample researched thirty years before. This showed the negative effect technologies had on people from generations of heavy users. Several other psychomotor tests were conducted and described throughout the article and all resulted in the adult groups being superior to the younger aged groups because of their extensive use of handwriting throughout their lifetimes. This article was published by the Taylor & Francis Group, LLC in Abingdon, UK. This group has over 200 years of publishing experience, over 1,500 titles, and international offices, making it a world leading publisher of academic journals. The author is Herbert Heuer, who has been working at the Leibniz Research Centre for Working Environment and Human Factors since 1991. Heuer was also a professor at Philipps University Marburg for several years. His research interests include human performance (movement, perception, action,) work related variations of human performance, and occupational strain and health. This source helped me to broaden my search to include the effects on basic motor skills rather than just handwriting in general. I was focusing my research on simply how much or how little we practice handwriting over time and what those effects were and this

article gave me a change to focus on-motor skills. I thought the research conducted and described in this article were all interesting and helpful to what I am exploring and would be a good idea to include in my exploratory essay. This essay also made me want to further explore the speed of basic motor skills between generations to see firsthand what exactly the effects technologies can have on this. Rosen, Christine. "Electronic Intimacy." Wilson Quarterly 36.2 (2012): 48. Points of View Reference Center. Web. 12 Mar. 2013. The author begins by sharing a personal experience of back and forth letter writing with an old friend and the emotions she experienced every time, anticipating the next letter. She questions if the way we communicate with one another alters our emotional experience of connection. Rosen describes the process we go through when pen hits paper; we think about how we feel and take time to reflect. Email, texting, and social media use encourages a fast paced and instantaneous fluctuation of our feelings. We experience an emotional terrain as Rosen calls it and anxiety from trying to figure out the meaning of our online connections. With letter writing, we experience patience and private emotions. The author ends by describing how she felt finding her old friend on Facebook years later and it being very uninformative and nearly meaningless compared to the emotions she used to feel opening his letters. This article was published by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in The Wilson Quarterly, which is a magazine that ranges over many subject areas including politics and policy, culture, religion, and science. It has been in publication since 1976. The author Christine Rosen is a senior editor of The New Atlantis, where she writes

about the social and cultural impact of technology. Her essays have appeared in numerous publications such as The New York Times Magazine, and The Wall Street Journal. Some research programs shes participated in that help make her work credible are science, and technology. I thought this article was a great find, and related to the main theme of my research paper. I thought about focusing my exploratory essay on the emotions I felt reading old notes and sermons my granddad had written versus watching an old home video of him. I thought this essay was great because it was centered on that difference in emotional connectivity you experience when you connect in different ways. A similarity that stood out to me between the personal experiences of the author and my own personal experiences was that we both favored the emotions we felt while holding those handwritten letters over the emotions we found when connecting through technology. This article made me want to include more personal stories people has with similar instances of comparing emotions between handwritten works and technological works. Suddath, Claire. "Mourning the Death of Handwriting."Time Magazine. (2009): n. page. Print. <http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1912419-1,00.html>. This article describes the art of handwriting as being lost, and that kids dont write neatly simply because no one is forcing them to. Typically computers are to blame for the increasingly sloppy handwriting, but technology is only part of the reason. The author of this article was in agreement with studies that suggested the decline in handwriting may be due to standardized testing rather than computers. If something wasnt on the test, it wasnt being taught, and handwriting isnt on the tests so it isnt stressed in the

classroom. Suddath ends the article by blaming the demise of cursive due in part to the kind of logic exhibited by a fifteen year old boy whose handwriting was so bad he needed to use a computer for standardized testing. The boy said I kind of want to stay bad at it, and Suddath says that shouldnt be a problem these days because weve come to devalue handwriting so greatly. This article was published by Time Inc., which is a division of Time Warner, and is one of the largest branded media companies in the world. The company appoints more than 138 million U.S. consumers in print, and has owned some of the biggest news stories of the decade. Claire Suddath, the author of this article, is TIME magazines culture and music writer. She graduated from Vanderbilt University as well as Columbia Universitys Graduate School of Journalism. She has over 3 years of experience at TIME magazine, and with culture being her strong suit, this article was well credited due to her knowledge on studying behaviors and patterns amongst groups. This article gave me the new perspective of looking at cursive and standardized testing linked to handwriting. It was very helpful in that it talked directly about the demise of handwriting and the art of it crumbling. It made me want to learn more about what exactly students are being required to learn in lower grades based on the standardized tests given. It gave me a completely different perspective on my topic by making me think outside of technology being the soul reason handwriting is depleting. The article mentioned that only 9% of the students researched used in-class computers at least once a week, and this made me want to learn more about what different things outside of technology are causing this so called death to handwriting.

This research has greatly impacted my inquiry project. I felt completely lost before writing this annotated bibliography because there was simply too much unorganized information. This bibliography offered me a structured way to summarize key points throughout my research and explore new ideas I had not thought of prior to doing research. I have been doing a lot of thinking about my inquiry question and whether or not I would like to tweak the it based on my interests and for now, I have decided to keep it the same. I have chosen How has technology effected the way we value handwriting? because it offers a broad enough window that allows me to interpret the question in several ways, offering numerous ideas and facts. I feel the research Ive done for my annotated bibliography all reflect on this question from different perspectives, which is what I was hoping for. It did surprise me that I got so much out of the annotated bibliography considering I was weary about my inquiry question. I figured most of the articles I did for the bibliography would not end up being used for my exploratory essay in fear that I would change my question at the last minute. I thought the research was going to be much harder to conduct but after finding the right keywords to search for in the librarys database, I found great articles that reassured me of my topic. The article about Autism Spectrum Disorder especially surprised me because I did not expect to find an article advocating a positive effect of technology on the way we value handwriting. This article happened to be my favorite of those researched because it gave me a large spectrum of studies to pull information from. I take much interest in mental disabilities and physical handicaps in both children and adults so it was wonderful and surprising that I found a way to incorporate that into this inquiry project. I am excited to see where my new research will take me with this exploratory essay. New things I am wondering about include:

-How can I incorporate positive influences of technology on the value of handwriting into my essay? -How will I stick to the theme of using my granddaddy as a prime example of letters versus technological use in emotional connections? -What innovative ways can I come up with for the structure of this exploratory essay? How can I steer clear of the stereotypical research paper?