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!

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

What would Socrates Say?


My section is “The 21st Century Mind”. This section is explaining how the most successful and affective way a persons mind should work in the 21st century. Peter W. Cookson Jr. describes the section best by saying, “Technical fixes to our outdated educational system are likely to be inadequate. We need to adapt to a rapidly changing world”(par 8). Describing that trying to hold onto the old ways of schools or education would be a poor decision. Today’s technology is way more advanced than before and this can be used in a positive manner. The 21st century is able to recognize and effectively solve Americas even the worlds greater issues using Cookson’s thought process of Critical Reflection, Empirical Reasoning, and Collective Intelligence. Critical Reflection is listening to the media and being able to distinguish the truth from lies. Take in the important and throw away the rest. Empirical Reasoning is realizing if you believe the supernatural not to rely on it to change our world. “We can overcome our ignorance not with wishful thinking” (par 13). A person is able to educate themselves and be an independent person but Collective Intelligence is saying we accomplish our best when we work as a team. We recognize a problem and resolve it as a team.
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1 comment:

  1. WesMay 6, 2011 at 11:50 AM

    i think this brings up good points and is similar in some ways to my own ideas

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