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



Monday, November 1, 2010

Revolution in this Tech Savy world

Cynthia Selfe writes a chapter in her novel called, Lest We Think the Revolution is a Revolution Images of Technology and the Nature of Change. It is all about if technology is the the differences of good or bad for this new student generation. Selfe writes about what the American public’s oppinion and reality sees fit for the following subjects: Global Village, Equal Land of Opportunity and Genders have equal Opportunities.

She counters and debates the realities of both sides of the spectrum.

Selfe claims,”network that spans the globe will serve to erase meanless geopolotical borders, eliminate racial and ethnic differences, re-established a historic familial relationship which binds together the peoples of the world regardless of race, ethnicity, or location….Inhabits of this electronic global village in turn, become foreigners, exotics, savages, objects of study and sometimes, to control.(294)” She contradicts both sides by saying technology may bring people together yet this is what it is doing by Americans sitting in the comfort of their homes while making people across the globe look like savages.

Reflecting on both sides is a great thing to show both sides of the coin. It’s nice to see what the hopes and dreams of Americans are for the internet but to see the dark side or reality reflects upon what is really happening.

Cynthia Selfe states, “a white, blond woman sits in a well appointed living room that is chock full of artifacts from around the world; several big-screen viewing areas front of her feature images of exotic people and far-off locations, a large computer with a world map on the screen, and a globe complete the representation. (298)” Selfe suggests that it is the luxury of a white person to sit and be comfortable while looking at the world through a screen, when in fact that woman could go travel across the globe and see the peoples of different countries instead of making assumptions of the savages.

Knowing the unknown, and believing something that is not right in front of your face is lies. You can know the traditons and peoples but how will you really know the traditions of the peoples culture without being and participating with.

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