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??

In his article "What Would Socrates Say?" author Peter Cookson is worried about our ability to learn and solve problems. He believes that the only thing google is really doing is making us less aware of our own ignorance. We think we possess knowledge due to the hundreds of randomized pieces of information we come across each time we hop online but that's really all it is; randomized pieces of information. I believe that while random information can at times be useful, it doesn't really count as useful knowledge until you understand it and experiance it.
He also says that all knowledge is social, which I think means that we can't just learn it all alone. We need other people there to bounce ideas off of until we get whatever it is we are looking for. Kind of like how House always has his epiphany due to another persons actions or words. I think the web is the perfect tool for social interactions though. Really that's what the web is based off of, social interaction. He goes on in his article to say, "Teachers and students already use the web to create lessons, communicate and share with others across the globe". What he means when he says this is that schools are slowly getting on the right track for getting people true knowledge. Instead of schools segregated from one another (like it is now) some of them are linking up and bouncing ideas off of one another. It's because a truly diverse learning enviroment which is kind of perfect.
I think if everyone came from the same back ground they would all have roughly the same thoughts about a topic. But if a school in say, Nebraska is trying to figure out something and a school in Egypt is tackling the same problem, their combined knowledge would tackle the problem from all sides just because of the different cultural ideas and backgrounds. I predict that eventually EVERYONE will be attending the same courses via the internet. Wonder what Socrates would say?
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3 comments:

  1. AnonymousFebruary 2, 2011 at 11:40 AM

    You helped me understand better the concept of knowing our ignorance. When I first read the article, I was confused at what Cookson was trying to say. Now, I understand that because we have so much information provided to us, we actually think we are knowledgeable and "smart" when in actuality we are still as dumb as we were before this information was piled into our brains.

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  2. Bart BoeckholtFebruary 2, 2011 at 11:46 AM

    Great job with the onset of the theysay, just as do I you seem to have a hard time avoiding the I say. I like the way you built into your first quote followed by a great explanation suming up what it means. Great Job!

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  3. AnonymousFebruary 2, 2011 at 11:49 AM

    Your insight into Cookson article is a great way to illustrate his point. Your summary allowed me to have another perspective and deeper understanding of Cookson’s point of view. I personally do not like relying on my own opinion knowing that I miss the point more often when going solo. When reading different points of view whether within our classroom or around the globe I find a greater appreciation and understanding within a group intelligence.

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