Christian and Kay
In 1936 a British Mathematician Alan Turing took a look around him at the advancing electronic system and came to the conclusion that one day we would be relying on a device that would replace all others. Although in 1936 it was just a “theoretical” deceive it has quickly become reality. In proving him correct the computer/electronic moguls via internet and intelligent cellphones have taken an array of simple devices and turned them into one all-encompassing super-advanced thinking machine that were initially designed to simplify our everyday life. The unfortunate setback of this is that our attention span and the way we receive information is being drastically and permanently changed forever. Instead of completing a task from start to finish we now feel the need to distract ourselves, even from the things we are trying to focus on. While writing essays for an English class we now find ourselves reaching for our cellphones to check for messages or flipping over to the next tab and changing our Pandora search subject.
Welcome to Our Blog Conversations Beyond the Classroom!
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!
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