relearning learning

If we start with knowledge and accept it’s not something we hold and carry around but something we access contextually we have knowing, not knowledge. We are knowing in different situations, knowing more in some contexts than others. If we expand knowing to learning and school, learning is something we are always doing, school is simply one context where learning occurs. So, teaching is making meaning in specific contexts with certain content. So what happens when we introduce technology to this equation. We clearly have individuals who are technophobic, some event has caused them to look at computers in a very specific, very negative way. How do we get them to look at technology situations, and computer situations as learning situations. The goal of teachers is not to teach and model learning, it’s something we always already do, the goal is to contextualize learning. How do you contextualize computer learning (what are commonly referred to as skills, but since we can’t carry knowledge, we can’t have skills, just ways of accessing knowing in context). How do we teach technophobes to look at computer usage as something like what we already do in everyday life? Are old dogs really less apt to learn new tricks, or are they simply out of practice? If they are out of practice then again, how do teachers demonstrating learning on the computer so students can mimic or scaffold to move away from their technophobia? Essentially, how do we introduce new contexts to the technology content so the learning associations can be rebuilt in a positive way? How do we teach teachers to approach learning in this way?

introduction to my comp paper

Online Composition Courses: Consideration of Space

With an ever increasing number of students enrolling in universities and community colleges, freshmen composition classes have been left with the task of accommodating this increase. Many universities have turned to online and hybrid freshmen composition courses to accommodate the large number of students without an increase in physical classroom space. The increase in these online courses allows for the teaching of a larger number of students without the need for additional classrooms, so in many ways, cost effectiveness is a key concern for universities implementing these courses. Hybrid courses offer similar benefits, since they only require limited classroom space for the limited time they meet face to face. This turn to online courses affects the delivery, pedagogy, as well as the place of the classroom. The following is a review of current literature surrounding the teaching of freshmen composition in hybrid and online environments. By understanding the current state of scholarship we can begin to see the place of online and hybrid courses within English departments, and the places and spaces of the actual classrooms when they are online.

Space and Place

The most significant difference in online and hybrid composition courses is the introduction of the computer for a large portion of the delivery of the course. To situate the current scholarship about online and hybrid composition courses it is helpful to consider the differences in space and place for both the teacher and students. Drawing on Christopher Keller and Christian Weisser’s explanation, “place is often seen as a modification of space; space is devoid of meaning, while place is endowed with meaning by humans, space seems open-ended and undelimited, while place is bounded and structured” (p. 4). It is places that have meaning, based on the use when occupied by people, and spaces that are created by places in use. Dobrin (2007) further expands Yi-Fu Tuan’s ideas of space and place finding that “places are spaces to which meaning and organization have been attached” (p. 15). Places and spaces are always connected, but places have order imposed on them, giving them identity and understanding, comfort. “Place is the temporal instance of observation of a site of ideological struggle and is written by whomever is winning the struggle at that moment” (p. 18). According to Dobrin, place is the site of the ideological struggle as determined by the winner of the struggle, while space is freedom, outside of struggle. Since places are infused with ideological ideas and identity, they are always already structured by both teachers and students and course material. When composition courses are moved from face-to-face interaction, their places are moved with them to the online environment. Traditional classroom spaces have a preconceived place, especially freshmen composition courses. Students come to class expecting to write, learn about writing and grammar. They also expect to interact with the teacher face to face, and with their peers. In online course spaces, the interaction is always mediated, changing the tools available in the space, and how meaning in endowed in the place. This is an important way to think about online courses, and will be revisited throughout the paper.

fashion

One of the big questions of the internet, especially for those who frequent Social Network Sites (like MySpace and Facebook) is “are you human?” One of the ways of understanding this question is through signaling theory, the way we signal to others that we are human, and the specific ways we interact with others in spaces to signal humanness. One of the ways to do this is through fashion, not just fashion of large fashion houses, but the route of fashion as an honest form of signaling group membership. Fashion is a way to show development along the trajectory of a society. It demonstrates social status, high fashion that no ones knows the label of will signal to certain people within the group. A Hello Kitty design will signal to most of society your access within society, your position as knowing Hello Kitty. Within online worlds this is particularly important. We, as humans, are always trying to determine if the asynchronous interaction we’re having is with a human or a machine, and we do that by socially contextualizing the interaction and the person we’re interacting with. If I interact with a person’s MySpace page who has Hello Kitty plastered across their profile background, and they’re number 1 friend is a Hello Kitty fan page, I have a specific idea of who that person is based on their identity signals. If I interact with someone who has PETA plastered across their page, and their number 1 friend is PETA2, I have a very specific idea of the identity of that person, and I know not to show them pictures of my fur coat (assuming I even owned one). Ultimately, it is through fashion, through our signal of social status in an online environment that allows other users to contextualize our humanness, and to present themselves in a friendly manner based on our signal of ourselves. Who knew fashion was such a form of information prowess?? what am i signaling about myself as a blogger, as a blogger on this blog with this photo? what does this signal about my understanding of who reads this blog?