Tuesday, September 11, 2012

Goals for 854

Reasons I’m looking forward to this class:
I am part of the generation that grew up with a home phone and now can’t imagine having one. I am part of the generation that is known for understanding and adapting new technologies quickly. These technologies contribute to my personal, social, and academic lifestyles. Therefore I believe that they should be studied.

Ivory tower = Bad
Ignoring these technologies and changes in the classroom is ignoring reality out of the classroom. I hope during this semester we can (quite specifically) answer why teachers should be teaching with technology.

My goals for our class:
Include all disciplines and use outside of academia
While our focus is most obviously English composition classrooms, I hope we can include theories and practices from multiple disciplines to see how other scholars and teachers are attempting to answer the same questions that we are.

Grapple with the goals of teaching
I hope we can address the following questions: are we teaching for marketability or are we teaching to encourage critical thinking and writing? (One could argue either, both, or neither depending on their teaching philosophy and goals.) What do students need to learn? How does this need relate to our teaching, their writing, digitality, and technology?

My individual goals:
To understand
I see it as a disservice to students to not include technology while teaching composition, but I would like to ground my reasons first theoretically and second by the experiences and research of others.

To argue
I would like to argue (quite thoroughly) why we should or should not teach with technology by examining what practices are proven to be effective in the classroom in order to help students become engaged, learned, critical, and prepared individuals.

To learn
I hope this class, our readings, and my classmates can
  • further help me learn about technologies and how they have been used socially and academically
  • lead to a historical understanding of the creation and use of such technologies in culture
  • lead to “rigorous play” (as Dr. Wysocki suggestsin the course blog) to learn by experimentation and through experience.

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