Reference no: EM133442673

QUESTION 1

"A few days before virtual learning started in D.C., I watched our 5-year-old try to scroll on the Dell laptop we had just picked up from the school. He dragged his two fingers down the track pad, but his fingertips are so small that the computer thought they were one finger, and the cursor just moved up and down. So I guess that's the first lesson of kindergarten, before "raise your hand" or even "mute your microphone": Hold your fingers a little bit farther apart when attempting to scroll down to find the "join" button for today's video chat with Señor C. Our son was clearly frustrated by this new device that couldn't differentiate between his two fingers, but hardware like that track pad is probably the lesser of the computer problems children are facing in virtual school.

As anxiety-inducing as adult-size track pads can be for tiny hands, the software they're encountering suffers from many more issues. In several cases, it wasn't made for children. Even if it was, it very likely wasn't made for children of all ages. The math program available to our son (after the school retracted his favorite one two weeks into school) only has buttons in English, with no symbols, to get you to the next exercise. He is 5. He cannot read. And that's just the beginning."

This is how Eric Lavallee begins his article about the problems of online learning. Why does he start his argument with this story about his son?

QUESTION 2

In an article about how dangerous artificial intelligence is, Zenon Kar makes references to the following: Ex Machina (2014, directed by Alex Garland); Blade Runner (1982, directed by Ridley Scott); and R.U.R. (1920, written by Karel Capek). Why does including references to these help Kar's argument seem more convincing?

QUESTION 3

In an essay where he argues that we should ban cigarettes to protect the health of children, Michaela Bloom reveals that her seven-year-old daughter died of lung cancer that she got from being around cigarette smoke. In her essay, she spaces out several photos: first, a picture of her child at age five on the first day of kindergarten, then a picture of her at age six in a hospital bed, and finally a photo of the casket at her daughter's funeral. What does this arrangement of photos do to convince readers of Bloom's perspective?