How I feel right now....

Helpful Exercise!

The next step in my research paper’s journey was this data gathering exercise.  We had a library presentation, which was very informative.  A UCF librarian demonstrated how to effectively find journals, articles and information on your topic.  I used the UCF database search and Google scholar.  I was very successful in my search and feel since my topic is so popular in society today I will not have much trouble finding previous research done on the topic.  I highly recommend using Google scholar for any research you need.  There are certain ways you can broaden your search by using the words “and” or “not”.  Once you find the right key words you should have no problem finding the necessary information. 

Here is my paper: 

Data Gathering Exercise

Kimberly King

ENC 1102

Professor Vives

September 13^th 2012

            I am researching on the effects Facebook has on college students.  To start my research on the topic I went to the website, http://library.ucf.edu/ and began searching in the database.  I searched with the key word combination of social medias, education, Facebook and college students.  I was surprisingly very successful with my first search with 134 results.  I clicked through the first couple articles and journals and thankfully most of them fit my topic perfectly.  After finding the necessary peer-reviewed articles I needed to find a primary piece of data.  I went to ProQuest and searched, effects of social media on education, and had no luck.  I then decided to just go to google.com because that is the search engine I am most familiar and comfortable with.  I searched “effects of Facebook on college students” and many blogs and newspaper articles came up.  I found a very interesting one with lots of data called, The Effects of Facebook on the Academics of Georgia College Students.  

I realized that not having many key words does not work very well in finding articles that match your topic.  The more key words you have the more specific your search becomes.   I was surprised to learn how easy it was to search the UCF library for articles.  Their database search is very helpful in finding exactly what you need.  At first when I started to use the suggested search engines I had a hard time finding good sources.  Once I used Google, which I what I am comfortable with, I had no problem finding exactly what I needed.  The Computers & Education journal had the most helpful articles relating to my topic. 

My peer-reviewed article called, The relationship between frequency of Facebook use, participation in Facebook activities, and student engagement, gave me some research done by others on the effects that Facebook has on school work.  They concluded that there are both positive and negative effects related to Facebook.  My primary document called, The Effects of Facebook on the Academics of Georgia College Students, explains the results of a survey given to students in Georgia.  This document has very informative graphs and data collected by the researchers.  This data can be used to back up my own ideas and findings into the conversation of my topic.  The documents hypothesis, “with an increased use of Facebook; there would be lower GPAs and people who study more would have higher GPAs. Along with this hypothesis, we believed that a student’s major would have not only an impact on Facebook usage, but their overall GPA”, was proven true.  This helps with my topic because it is answering almost exactly what I want to research about.  This is only one of the opinions I want to add in my research.  I would also love to find a document of someone disagreeing with this hypothesis.

I have decided that my research question needs a small revision.  My question was: What effects does using social communication through technology have on students of the University of Central Florida? Now I want to revise my question to:  What effects does Facebook have on student’s academics at the University of Central Florida? 

Overall this data gathering exercise was successful.  I have a good start as to what documents I will be analyzing and researching on to help answer my question. 

Works Cited:

"Trending Stories." Mashable. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 Sept. 2012. <http://mashable.com/2011/04/27/facebook-effect-students/>.

"StatCrunch - Data Analysis on the Web." StatCrunch - Data Analysis on the Web. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 Sept. 2012. <http://www.statcrunch.com/5.0/viewreport.php?reportid=23987>.

My Revision Plan

Wednesday in class I had my research question generation document revised by Sarah Smyder.  My research question is: To what extent does social communication through technology have effects on the literacy of students at the University of Central Florida.  She helped me organize my information and help reword my research question.  After getting her opinion, it was much easier to reword my question into something much more complex.  Sarah said it was good that I clearly stated why I wanted to research on the issue, which is because of my major in education.  It is also clear that I will not use binary thinking on my research.  I also had many grammar mistakes that needed correction and some filler.  I am much more confident on my paper after the revision workshop.  Thanks Sarah! 

Here is my paper: 

Research Question Generation Document

Kimberly King

ENC 1102

Professor Vives

August 31^st 2012

My Literacy Past

            Throughout childhood every person has many different influences and experiences that make them unique.  Exposer to literacy has a noticeable impact on a child’s life.  From bedtime stories to social medias, all types of literacy shape an individual’s literacy history.  I am very fortunate to say that my childhood was filled with a positive literacy environment and literacy sponsors that helped me excel in my future.   I will be discussing my literacy environment when I was younger, my literacy sponsors, and my reading/writing habits.

            From the moment I was born literacy was all around me.  My parents were my first literacy sponsors.  Like most parents they quickly did everything they could to teach me how to speak.  When I was an infant, my parents read to me often, especially because my sister was learning to read at the time.  I became interested in listening to my mother, father, and older sister read to me around one year old.  We would have bedtime stories every night and still remember my favorite book being Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs.  I also recall my love for the library as a young child.  My father works in the hotel business, which forced us to move to seven different states throughout my childhood because of job relocation.  Every new state we would move to I would get excited to receive a new library card.  My mother would take my sister and I to the library regularly to check out new books.  As soon as I walked into the library, I would head straight to the Junie B. Jones books and sometimes I even read them twice.  Books were always involved in my childhood and I am very thankful that my parents exposed me to so much literacy at such a young age. 

            Another kind of literacy I was exposed to in childhood was technology.  I was fortunate enough to have a computer at home.  My mother would buy my sister and I computer games that we couldn’t get enough of, for instance, Oregon Trail, which were both a fun and knowledgeable type of game.  I would also create Neopet accounts.  This was my first time being able to interact with people through the computer.  I then created a MySpace and Facebook, which really got me interested in the computer and all of its perks.  When I received my first essay assignments in middle school I began using Microsoft Word to compose my work.  My sister would help me out with any questions I had on the programs, but for the most part, I clicked around and figured everything out by myself.  I even began downloading books onto my iPad, that I fortunately received as a Christmas present in high school, because I enjoyed reading them on there rather than paper.  I became very “tech savvy” and used a computer for almost everything.

            My parents were my first literacy sponsors and I first realized that they gave me a great literacy background when I began attending school.   My teachers then became my literacy sponsors as well.  I had always somewhat enjoyed my English and Writing classes in school.  I would say I am a creative person and in these classes I was always able to show that side of me.  Summer readings were never a struggle because of my background of reading library books regularly.  I had always received good grades in these classes but never really considered myself an amazing writer. 

            It wasn’t until my summer B session at UCF that I discovered myself as a writer.  I took Composition 1 and our last project about the writing process greatly helped my writing.  We did a “self-study” for a week to discover our reading and writing habits.  Every hour we would write down what we had read or written and rank our feelings, distractions, location, etc.  After I had collected my data, I discovered many patterns in my reading and writing that I could either keep up or change.  The biggest thing I learned from my study, as silly as it sounds, is that distractions work in my favor.  I would need music, breaks, and interruptions to help me get my work done.  If I sat at my desk for three hours straight, I would not be able to write my best work.  I am very glad that I discovered my reading and writing habits my first semester of college. 

Research Question

            For my research paper I wanted to find a topic that I was passionate about in order to ensure that I would enjoy working on it for the rest of the year.  Also, it is proven that you excel most in work you do that you are passionate about, rather than something you don’t enjoy learning about.  For those reasons, I chose to somewhat relate my topic to my major, education.  My question that I want to research about is: What effects does using social communication through technology have on students of the University of Central Florida?  I will be discussing my reasons why I want to research this question, what I would like to learn from it, and how my class readings can relate to it. 

I am interested in researching this question because I have been using social medias and texting for the past few years throughout school and I am curious to what effects it has on myself as well as others.  I feel that playing around on the computer has helped me with problem solving and has enabled me able to figure things out on my own.  I couldn’t imagine not having social networks and texting because all of that easy communication would be lost.   I would also love to be able to share the knowledge I find out about social medias and texting to educate others, since I am an education major.  In my opinion I don’t find a problem with using social medias, however, others think differently.  Some say it effects self-esteem, grammar, and wastes time.  I have seen many cyber bullying instances that really effect teens.  Maybe it should be proven that social medias are becoming more of a negative than a positive. 

I want to learn if texts and social medias are hurting or helping our societies literacy.  I feel it is important to know this answer because of how big social medias and texting have become.  I want to research on the statistics of how fast Facebook and other sites are growing.  Our society may become so focused on these types of communication that it gets out of control and causes negative effects on education.  This research can be used to help our future in either promoting or degrading the two. 

I would want to research people on both sides of my question.  People who feel they cannot live without social networking and texting and people who barely or never use it. My data will be collected from students at the University of Central Florida.  This way I can get both sides of the situation and not be biased.   I will be sure to keep an open mind while doing my research because I know I use social networking and texting frequently.  I would also research about other people’s findings through books and the Internet. 

In the reading, The Future of Literacy, it is explained how technology is advancing in our society and helping with education.  (DeVoss 183-211)  This is the reading that sparked my research question.  The authors claim that learning technology throughout childhood really has its benefits since our society is so heavily based on it.  They declare that it is has a positive effect on our literacy.  I would like to further their research and figure out how accurate their claims are.