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!

Sunday, April 17, 2011

Is Google making us stupid? sometimes


In discussion of most people are power browsing, one controversial issue has been people don’t get good information from power browsing. On one hand Nicholas Carr states in his article Is Google Making Us Stupid?. “The web has been a godsend to me as a writer. Research that once required days in the stacks or periodical rooms of libraries can now be done in minutes.” This arguing that when needed internets the best way to finding quick information. On the other hand Carr reflects work from Maryanne Wolf “Wolf worries that the style of reading promoted by the Net, a style that puts efficiency and immediacy above all else” contends getting a number or one word is all we get out of power browsing. Others maintain that Google has created the ultimate search engine or library in a since. My own view is that we do not find the best information from the internet in causes of power browsing. Though I concede that Google has made it easy for us to find data, I still maintain that we are unable to get knowledge from the internet, only from books. For example Nathan Shedroff says in An Overview of Understanding “ One of the best ways of communicating knowledge is through stories.” Although some might object that you are able to find stories and books online, I reply that your most unlikely to read or finish reading them online when there are quicker and easier ways to finding the answer you are looking for thru power browsing. This issue is important because without finding knowledge you are unable to obtain wisdom and wisdom, Nathan Shedroff says, “offers the greatest reward”.
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