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

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

"What Would Socrates Say?"

Social networking is taking over. Social networking is starting to become the norm. Not only are people relaying on Social networking to stay in touch, but also for Education. I have a friend whos little brother is now taking online High School classes. My friend’s brother was given a laptop with a free Internet connection so he could connect to his classes. According to Peter W. Cookson Jr. in his article, “What Would Socrates Do?” Socrates had “the first personal learning network, and he taught with the most enduring teaching tool of all time—the purposeful conversation” (36). Socrates believed that asking questions was key and that “[Socrates] called himself a citizen of the world because the questions he asked were universal” (36). Now with the Internet and connecting people all over the world, citizen of the world can start to ask questions that are universal. Kids, from all over the world, getting together in an online class, getting different viewpoints from kids their age, gaining a deeper understanding of other peoples culture, history, wisdom, language, politics. These changes in educating the young, may lead to global peace. Technology, if used in a responsible manner, could bring humanity together. Proper education is important, but our education system is outdated, we need something more. Something that will bring people together, something that can benefit all of humanity and not just a few power hungry countries. The Societal paradigm has already begun to shift, it’s up to the people on whether it’s for better or for the worse
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2 comments:

  1. MichaelFebruary 2, 2011 at 11:43 AM

    Your comment helped me to understand something that I had glossed over in my first read. "Socrates had the 'first personal learning network', was better understood (by me) when I read the trailer to that statement, "...and he taught with the most enduring teaching tool of all time —the purposeful conversation”.

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  2. DeKriekFebruary 2, 2011 at 11:45 AM

    I really liked this post. It helped me understand how beneficial a globally connected educational system would be for the world.

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