What was Michael Wesch trying to say in his video “A Vision of Students Today”? I guess the better question is, what wasn’t he trying to say? In less than five minutes, Wesch’s video reviewed a survey that consisted of 200 students adding 361 post on what it meant to be a college student. The main ideas the students came up with were schools being outdated, classes being over filled, students abuse of technological privileges in classrooms, education not being relevant to life, no personal relationship between teachers and students, students being over worked and money being wasted.
Wesch’s classroom seemed old and had been vandalized. It was large and could hold a hundred or more students. One student claimed that their average class size was 115 students, while another said only 18% of their teachers new their name. The classroom being old and vandalized set’s up a poor learning environment. Their distractions, and may setup the idea that it’s okay not to care about their education. With classrooms size being so full and the lack of a relationship between students and their teachers, almost dooms the students to fail from the start. Most of the students will not take their education seriously, and will not ask questions. Questions that may be key to the Student’s understanding of the martial, but because they don’t really know their teacher, they may not feel comfortable asking their question, because the teacher is like a stranger to them.
With money being wasted on books, paying for classes then not attending, and using class time to facebook and surf the web, not finding the relevance in the class work to their lives and students feeling over worked could be an indication that our educations needs to adapt to technology. Digital reading materials and online classes could make wasting money on books and skipping classes a thing of the past. Students surfing the web and facebooking, could in the future be searching databases of information to have online debates with other students on a social network designed for education. Having debates and question their own beliefs could make education more rewarding, no longer will students feel over worked, but instead feel the rewards of learning. Proving their point, or seeing something from a different perspective that might change the way they look at, or understand, the world.
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
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
In a large traditional university most students won't care about their education because they feel like no one cares about them. Universities don't take in to account the different learning styles that each student has and most students aren't even aware of how they learn. There is definately a bigger picture there than what you can see when you watch the video for the first time. All we can do is ask the question, what does the future hold for education and for students today?
ReplyDeleteI agree with most of what you say. How did you come up with the numbers that you quoted in your blog?
ReplyDelete