Speech

Are Smartphones Making us Dumber?

How many people are there in China again? Oh don’t worry I’ll just google it.  Have you ever considered that using a smartphone is actually making you dumber? Imagine that after a routine medical exam, your doctor delivers some terrible news.  Since your last checkup your intellectual abilities have significantly decreased.  Your social ability to communicate with others has worsened, and your memory for everyday events is no longer operating as it once did, but there is some good news.  There is a solution that won’t cost you a cent.  The solution, put away your smartphone.

There is research that suggests that the memory capabilities of smartphone users is actually decreasing.  Researchers believe that a possible reason for this is because of the huge amount of information accessible on a smartphone, users are no longer required to remember and retain information as they once did.  For example where somebody would have had to rely on their memory to reach a certain street in a city now they could easily put that name into a smartphone, and simply follow the directions given.

Another area of concern for smartphone users is how it is affecting their socialising skills.  Have you ever noticed a group of teenages sitting around having lunch and every single one is on their smartphones.  They tend to be looking down at their phones instead of making eye contact while chatting with their friends.  This can lead them to miss important facial expressions that are crucial in effective communication.  

The next area that researchers looked at was the productivity of smartphone users compared to those without because of the constant distractions for smartphone users from email alerts, texts, facebook, twitter and all the other types of social media.  Once the alert goes off it makes your brain wonder who is trying to contact me, should I answer it now or should I answer it later.  These constant distractions although small add up over the course of a day, a week, a year to be substantial. An experiment was conducted by a school in England where they imposed a mobile phone band on students.  After a short time students test scores had risen by 6%.

In conclusion the benefits of smartphones are huge, the amount of information that can be accessed instantly has huge benefits if used correctly. However smartphone uses need to be aware of some of the downsides to excessive smartphone usage. Such as affecting your intellectual abilities.  Smartphones also affect your ability to socialise correctly, and there are possible detrimental effects to your memory recall. Don’t you think that it is ironic that a device designed to improve efficiency, and communication is in a way achieving the exact opposite. We have designed a device to help control our lives but really that device ends up controlling us.

Week 4 Term 3

This has been fun because I finally finished making my pillow in tech arts!! To make the pillow we had to design what we wanted the front of our pillow to look like we did this on paper. Next we drew the design onto fabric. My design had a purple sewing machine on the front and blue, and pink a pattern as the border. Next we used vivid, and out lined the pencil markings, and then painted our cushions. When the paint had dried we ironed, and pinned our cushions before sewing them. Finally we stuffed them, and they were ready to take home. Another event that took place this week was our class speeches I was really nervous especially because they were filming us. Mrs Crowe liked my speech, and a few of my friends speeches, so we have to do them again on Monday. A few speech topics were T.V. adds should be banned, animal abuse should stop, could we last without technology, no more bulling and my speech topic was are smart phones making us dumber? This week for reading our teacher has set us the task of reading a new book that is out of our comfort zone then writing a novel analysis about it. I am very proud of myself because I have earned my never give up band. I am really look forward to next week because it is going to be a very busy very exciting week!

Week 3 Term 3

This week has been exciting because of the five new gusts that arrived at our school this Tuesday. There are two boys, tow girls and one teacher I have only met the two girls, and they seem really nice, but they don't usually speak in English if they can help it. The two girls are staying at my friends house for the two weeks that they are in New Zealand, and because my friend is in my class the two girls spend a bit of time with us. They have come over from China to New Zealand for a little while, so they can learn English. This week in tech arts we have been creating pillows I finished painting my one on Tuesday. For the pictures on the pillow I have a really big purple sewing machine in the middle of my pillow case. In the bottom two corners I have little jars that I want to sew buttons into I am also planning on sewing little stitch marks across the bottom to represent sewing. In writing we finished our last argument writing on cats and dogs, and have now moved onto a new piece of argumentative writing my new topic is plastic supermarket bags should be abolished. Yesterday at lunch time I had my student lead conference (SLC) that's when you, your parents and teacher have a conference, and you read out stuff that you wrote about school and work it was kind of embarrassing. Next your teacher will read out something she wrote about you, and your work habits, and then your parents ask questions if they have any.