Katherine James
A Vision of Today
English 100 C
Michael Wesch and his students at Kansas State University produced a video
“A Vision of Today” regarding current student life. In this video, University students hold up pieces of paper with individually written messages expressing their opinions on education and societal problems. Students were not presenting solutions but rather what their generation is facing within the current system. Signs held up placed considerable emphasis on socializing through email, texting, and Facebook rather than motivation towards studies. Students seemed to express a futility regarding the impact and relevance their education would have on their life and society. Will their college skills be transferable to the “real world?”
How do we turn on that light within our students so they become engaged in what their learning? Author, Peter Cookson Jr. echo’s these students concern in his book, “What Would Socrates Say?” Cookson explains it’s essential that we restructure our existing educational system through a more Socratic method, “To meet the educational needs of this rising tide of humanity, we must think outside the box of conventional schooling.”
(Page 4) Cookson understands why “A Vision of Today” reflects many students’ attitudes towards education and suggests a major overhaul to bring us into the 21st century. Adapting an alternative method of learning that involves a collective intellectual environment where teachers and students learn together.
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
Your take on the topic, "How do we turn on that light within our students so they become engaged in what their learning?" is spot on, in my opinion. The light that shines on student interest is part of the need.
ReplyDeletei agree in the fact that we have to restructure our existing education system in a "socratic way". also what i understood is that we have to think outside the box to get ahead.
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