DGL Misinformation Debate - Team A

Short for "malicious software," malware refers to software programs designed to damage or do other unwanted actions on a computer system.

Common examples of malware include viruses, worms, trojan horses, and spyware. Viruses, for example, can cause havoc on a computer's hard drive by deleting files or directory information. Spyware can gather data from a user's system without the user knowing it.

he geodatabase is the common data storage and management framework for ArcGIS.

create a central data repository for spatial data storage and management.

There has to be a comprehensive strategy in place to implement technology into the school system, Wise says, and the teachers have to be involved in the planning stages.

With this system, says Wise, "The teacher is able to engage with each student and immediately determine what their needs are."

"They have tools so that instead of seeing 25 students sitting in front of them looking the same," Wise says, "they now know that this student needs this particular assistance, and this student needs that something else."

Taught with the video lectures, Roshan's students in the 2010-11 school year scored an average of 4.11 on the AP calculus test, compared to the 3.59 average among her students who took the test and were taught in the traditional classroom setting the year before. And a third of the class—a 10 percent increase from the previous year—scored a 5, the highest score a student can achieve on an AP test.

For a public school district, such as the Chicago Public Schools, budget concerns "are always an issue," says Talha Basit, the client computer service manager at CPS. Though there are more than 400,000 students among 675 schools, only about 100,000 computers and 5,000 iPads are available for student use.

In a pilot program in four California districts, students who used the Algebra 1 app outperformed students who used traditional textbooks, according to teachers at one of the pilot schools.

"[Twitter] is not something I'm going to be using to chat [with students]," Newman says. "I use it as an additional way to let students know if there's some last-minute news, like class being cancelled."

"The Berkeley's and [Massachusetts Institute of Technology's] of the world spearheaded the [webcast] movement long ago. Now YouTube has provided the platform for all universities," Lin says. "People think, 'YouTube' and they think entertainment, but there is an incredible amount of people coming to learn."

A study carried out by Varnhagen et al. looked at IM communications between adolescents and found that ‘spelling ability was not highly correlated with new language use’ (Varnhagen 2010: 729). In some cases, those with better literacy skills used textisms more frequently than those who were poorer in terms of their spelling ability. These findings relate to the idea that ‘children who are comfortable with writing – those with good literacy skills – will be experimental and use textisms more than other children’ (Vosloo 2009: 3).

Text messaging is simply an evolution of technology creating a new form of language, and as long as children and adults are able to distinguish when to use formal and informal English in the correct context, texting will not dumb down literacy

Crystal (2008: 162) also claims “children could not be good at texting if they had not already developed considerable literacy awareness”. Being able to write in text language comes after mastering standard writing.

They defined digital tools to include a wide range of media forms: images, video and audio clips, hypertext, hypermedia, and Web pages. The majority of studies they found dealt with reading comprehension and vocabulary development. Pearson et al. concluded that a wide range of digital tools enhance reading comprehension and vocabulary development by providing students access to word pronunciation, word meaning, contextual information, and comprehension scaffolds to guide an individual’s reading. Thus, a strong research base supports the conclusion that technology can enhance all aspects of literacy development.