In response to Prompt 1
Bryant, Kendra Nicole
U21172145
20 January 2008
BLOG 2
…so…why didn’t Dr. Moxley make Jackson Pollock’s “Technological Dramas” a required reading upon entering USF’s FYC Program? After reading this essay, so much about the FYC Writing Program had been made clear…and I guess now that I’ve been enlightened, I can ease up on resisting peer-production technologies…as a former secondary English teacher at an “inner-city” school…I just couldn’t understand why the FYC didn’t simply present benchmarks and allow teachers to come up with their own assignments…although I’m not much of an advocate for the current secondary English curriculum, it seemed that benchmarks and weekly lesson plans were working, for the most part…the struggles I had with secondary English departments, at least with mine, however, were that neither the 10th grade teachers knew what the other was doing, nor did the teachers who taught 9th, 11th, 12th and AP…then to top that problem…9th grade instruction sometimes failed to be a stepping stone for 10th grade, 10th grade failed to lead into 11th, 11th failed to spill into 12th…and well, once a student got to 12th grade and graduated because the teacher knew that the student had been mis-educated, he or she goes to college, and still has no idea what the main idea of a piece of literature is, or how to write a thesis statement…who knew that USF’s FYC could be a possible fix it for some secondary English departments?
When I first entered this program as an instructor I was so annoyed with the technology requirement, the talk of SharePoint, WIKI, blogs…and sometimes I still get agitated…however, I must applaud the department for coming up with a program that addresses standardization…with English students on one page, as the essay points out, teachers and students stay on task, even with absences…in addition, allowing teachers to contribute to building a curriculum is a freedom that not many instructors are granted…it never registered to me that the FYC was a collaboration that actually did insist on building community…I always viewed SharePoint and emailing, WIKI and Flashlight, as disengaging…I guess the high school teacher in me was looking for Department meetings that allowed instructors to fellowship with one another…but now that I think about it…although I fellowshipped with my secondary school colleagues…I rummaged like a scavenger looking for ideas and projects to make sure that my students were receiving the education they needed to be successful in the next grade level, as well as in life…which brings me to my next reading interest…talking heads…lol…
I won’t say much since my blog is becoming a novella…however, although technology is cool…and can be used in the classroom…technology should only be used as supplemental material…as an instructor, the greatest gift to me is being able to teach a student how to use his or her own brain…no one can take your mind away from you…however, as Boyle mentions in “IBM, Talking Heads, and Our Classrooms,” technology can shut down, thus letting you down…and omg…the drama and lost time associated with such mishaps…just last week technology failed me in the classroom…and I think had I not had classroom experience, I might’ve lost my cool…but I made sure I told my students that I have a love/hate relationship with technology, and today, I hate it…lol…folks are in such a rush to do everything…to get married, to have children, to get to work, to get home…to get the latest movie, CD, cell phone, and computer…and now, to learn literacy’s basics…yea, technology is definitely cool…but wow…are we seriously considering using technology as the main vehicle for teaching Hamlet? How disengaging is that? Technology, indeed, plays its part…and I am a big advocate for alternative teaching…however, once we begin to replace instructors with computers and television, omg…we will be living in an I-Robot society…and I just may have to adopt the role of Will Smith…tee hee…
Side note…one of the questions asked in the blog was, “Which issues are missing?” In this week’s writings, I would have liked to see some research on the effects of these technologies on minority students…I had a black student last semester who wasn’t doing well partly because he couldn’t grasp the University’s technology requirement…and I will leave it at that….
rhetech said,
January 28, 2008 at 12:41 am
I also had a few students who were technophobes, resistant for various reasons. Many were consistently confused about where to find the project guidelines on the collegewritng website; others, I think, got lost in Blackboard. Although it required more time and effort on my part, I started emailing files and links to them because I could empathize with their frustration. I wanted the focus of my class to be on critical thinking, not on learning to navigate labyrinthian websites that left them dazed and confused. Kate Z.