WELCOME

Welcome to our Eng 100 Blog “Conversation Beyond the Classroom”! The title of this blog refers to the community of active readers & collaborative learners we are creating by sharing our academic writing for Eng 100 with each other + a larger group of students, instructors, academics, and just about anybody who chooses to follow our blog! When you write and post your reader responses here (and, later, as you write your essays for the course), I encourage you to use this audience to conceptualize who you are writing for and, most important, how to communicate your ideas so that this group of academic readers and writers can easily follow your line of thinking. Think about it this way: What do you need to explain and articulate in order for the other bloggers to understand your response to the essays we’ve read in class? What does your audience need to know about those essays and the authors who wrote them? And how can you show your readers, in writing, which ideas you add to these “conversations” that take place in the texts we study?
As students of Eng 100, you will use this blog to begin conversations with other academic writers on campus (students and instructors alike). We become active readers of each other’s writing when we comment on posts here. And, best of all, we are using this space to share ideas! I encourage you to use this blog to further think through the topics and writing strategies you will be introduced to this quarter. As always, be sure to give credit to those people whose ideas you borrow for your own thinking and writing (you should do this in the blog by commenting on their post, but you will also be required to cite what you borrow from your peers/instructors if and when it winds up in your essays. More details on that later…).
Finally, keep in mind that writing to and for this audience is a good way to prepare for the panel of readers (faculty at WCC) who will be reading and assessing your writing portfolio at the end of the quarter. We hope that as a large group of active readers, we can better prepare each other for this experience. But, in the meantime, let’s have fun with it! I am really excited see how far we can take this together!


--Mary Hammerbeck, Instructor of Eng 100

Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Meagan K: Par 4 - Par 7 Summary "They Say"

Cookson shares the ideas of the other side of the argument where knowledge somehow develops on its own. Rather than questioning and developing cognitive thinking, we just need to absorb info and knowledge will develop. Cookson states, “Some advocates believe that we can Google, Skype, blog, and Twitter our way to enlightenment.” (Par. 4) In other words, these social networks and Internet sites will lead us to a good knowledge base of information and therefore should not be of worry to mankind. On the other hand, some believe that this obsession with technology is anti-social and is actually stunting intellectual growth. The final part of this section brings about an idea where we integrate our ability to deep think and analyze while using technology only as a tool or resource. Cookson believes that we need to learn from our past mistakes as a society and “create a new learning” that is “consistent with the cognitive and expressive demands” of our time. (p. 7.)
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1 comment:

  1. AnonymousFebruary 2, 2011 at 11:41 AM

    I like the fact that you brought up the other side of argument. Helps me to know that there is two sides to what cookson is saying which broadens the perspective and creates a bigger picture.
    Learning is a social thing and I think that's in essence what Cookson is getting at and the Internet is a resource for learning to happen with other students across the world.

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