Rachel Dretzin’s documentary “Growing up Online” is about the exposure of the Internet to the younger generation. The main concepts of this video were social networking sites, the relationship between children and parents due to technology, and education. Currently, there are high schools that are using smart boards and podcasts to further students’ learning. Steve Maher, a social studies teacher, claims that “[teachers] almost have to be entertainers”. To be able to get the attention of students, they must “cut through the media” by using new technologies. There are also teachers that have decided to dismiss all of the media and use old-fashioned teaching in the classroom. Rose Porpora, an English teacher at Chatham High School, believes that students have changed in the 30 years that she has been teaching. They “struggle with the ability to focus” and are “overexposed to the quickness…and immediate responses” of the media. Maher and Porpora are on opposing sides of this battle. Maher argues that we must “accept [technology in education] as a reality” while Porpora claims that she is “trying to hang onto what [she] thinks is the most important [of education]” and that she is “fighting the good fight”. Social networking sites are the biggest trend of the 21st century. The documentary states that there are over 160 million members on Facebook and Myspace, the two most popular sites. Brooke, a freshman at Chatham High School, claims that “pretty much everyone has one”. Their uses consist of communicating through messages and comments, posting pictures, and checking relationship statuses. Anne Collier, the author of “Myspace Unraveled” states that “discretion [and] privacy [are] a thing of the past”. The differences in teenagers because of the internet are evident. According to C.J. Pascoe, a staff member at UC Berkeley, these social networking sites are “digital representations” of kids. Jessica Hunter, known as Autumn Edows online, had created totally separate life than her own on websites like this. At the age of 14, she had provocative photos posted online for millions of people to view and comment on. Autumn claims that she did not feel like herself and “liked it” because she “felt like [she] was famous”.
Technology and the media have had an unimaginable effect on our society. Although the younger generation is so accustomed to it, it is hard to believe that there are people still that do not know how to check their email. The difference in generations was most evident when my parents had started to ask questions about things like Facebook and text messaging. Currently, almost every one of my aunts is on Facebook. At first I thought it was ridiculous because I considered social networking sites as something that only teenagers used but I realized that it was an efficient way to communicate with my family. My mom recently asked how to “tag” people in pictures and change her profile picture. This should have taken five minutes at the most but instead took an hour. I assumed she would know how to use technology because she uses a computer every day at work but every so often, she will call asking why the Internet is not working or why she cannot get her iTunes to work even though we are 200 miles apart.
Welcome!
Welcome to our Eng 100 Blog “Conversations 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! We 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
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! We 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
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