Selfe describes America’s technological fascination both as a potent fear and enlightenment for society. Teachers use computers in the classroom to help students progress further. Computer technology is now just as important as English, math and science. Selfe tells that “They are laden with cultural information, shot through with the values, ideological positions, and social understandings that comprise our shared experience.” Selfe mentions the vision that we will create a global village that will unite the people of the world and help us pursue a common agenda. With computer networks spanning geopolitical borders, racism, and ethnic differences will dissolve. “Digital technology can be a natural force, drawing people into greater harmony.” Selfe describes that Americans are so used to being on top that joining together they would have to relinquish their status in the world. America has it extremely easy since we consume about eighty percent of the resources in the world. Americans still enjoy the fact that contributing to their neighbors in helpful ways, lending them useful technology so they can catch up with the rest of the world. Selfe strongly talks about the use of advertisements and how they are persuasive and appealing. Americans use technology to become world travelers. Americans can see the world without ever leaving their living room. Safety and comfort are the main concerns of Americans and this is what separates us from other inhabitants of the global village. Americans are the providers for the global village; we are the designers and the village benefactors. As much as we’d like to think technology is not the solution for everything and well be the contributing cause of many of the problems we’re dealing with. America’s tool has been our accomplishment and is being used for our benefit; we use technology to multiply our market, our success, improve our cultural profits. Selfe tells that we try to live in the American narrative, land of equal opportunity, un-gendered utopia and the global village. Americans try to abandon old motives and move forward but the so called stereo-types about gender related issues still pop up. Men using the internet for productive meaningful goals whiling women use computer technology for their family and happiness. Each gender plays their role. For women, the seductress, the beauty, the mother-all relationship ratified by our historical experience, easily accessible to our collective imagination, and informed by traditional social values. For men, the biker, the nerd, and the sex maniacs are the traditional values we learn early on. Selfe is mainly speaking about how we can address difficult problems and cooperate together to improve our society.
1. At one level, we believe in the pairings; we believe in the computer’s power; and we believe strongly in the beneficial ways the technology promises to improve our lives. With technology the pros greatly outweigh the cons and Americans have the ability to give the world a foothold into a world vastly larger than their own. Computers are becoming a required element in order to maintain a connection to the world. Opening up to the world with technology is a success all by itself. Breaking down social, ethnic, racist barriers with one single swoop.
2. Indeed, the narratives linking technological change to social change are parts of the reason that English teachers- like many other educators- have come to embrace computer technology so enthusiastically over the past decade. As society improves, our teaching methods must be improved as well or educational growth will be hindered and our progress to a better society will be halted. Computer technology is about gaining information quickly and that’s what the students of today want.
3. As Much as Americans might like to think it; technology is not the solution for all of the world’s problems-and indeed, it might well be a contributing cause to many of them. America is not viewed as the best country and we’re practically considered a young kid with a gun; capable of anything because we have the resources to do what we want and we don’t have the national experience; we’re only two hundred years old. We’re that spoiled kid across the street the gets all those new toys that come out every week. We haven’t had the time to see what repercussions we’ve dealt out; and time is not on our side.
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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