What I’ve gathered from Cynthia L Selfe’s essay is that she is exploring different views on the technological movement influencing modern society. She describes how educators always end up talking about change. Change caused by technology and computers. She elaborated on three main myths or narratives.
There’s the “Global Village and the Electronic Colony” which involves all people of race, sex, and social status being connected all over the world. On the surface this sounds like a good narrative, a closer look would reveal that this does not work so perfectly. We would begin to use the internet as a source to solve world problems, but end up using it as a tool to “…increase our own cultural profits at the expense of others…” (301)
Narrative #2: “Land of Equal Opportunity and Land of Difference.” Like the previous narrative this one has a concept that is beneficial to most. They use past memories of American culture to make Americans of all race, sex, and social status feel optimistic and upbeat, utilizing ads depicting images of hope. Yet, the ads sometimes lack people of a certain race, sex, or social status making the “Land of Difference.”
The final narrative, “The Un-Gendered Utopia and The Same Old Gendered Stuff” explores the idea that technology is not gender specific. Gender won’t predict success or social status. However, its American culture that has taught us that some things are specific to gender. Each gender sends a message relating to the culture we have acquired from our lives, and advertisements play off this perception.
Interesting quotes I found are “Such a realization can serve to remind teachers that technology does not necessarily bring with it social progress…” Selfe claims that even though the benefits of technology could help future generations evolve, the existing cultural standards are hard to overcome. Another quote is “These are also the reasons that the ads included in this chapter can reveal to us the complications of our feelings toward technology and illustrate how these feelings are played out in the shared landscapes of our lived experience.” Certain ads will trigger a response in Americans due to the fact that we already have set cultural beliefs. It will be difficult for technology to produce social progress because of these beliefs.
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
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment