This week was a challenge to me because I had fallen behind in my classwork. I needed to complete the work I had missed while still attempting to complete the work at hand. And I needed to do all of this while working with a medium that although I was comfortable using, I had serious limitations about how well I could use it. I don't like questioning myself or feeling like what I've done isn't my best work. My relationship with technology has ultimately changed since taking this class, a class that pushed me to my limit at a time that I was at my weakest academically and emotionally. Creating my website and an idea that I could actually use eventually since I am not currently in a classroom was also a challenge. My hope would be to actually use what I have learned, most especially the frustrations I felt to better understand how to incorporate technology into whatever I teach.
After taking this class I can honestly say that incorporating technology into my classroom is not only a desire, but a necessity. This class has proved to me that I need to produce students that can compete in an ever changing and technologically evolving society. It has also taught me that in working with literacy and with my hopes to work teaching composition in lower-income communities, that incorporating technology is even more important to make sure that these students don't fall behind in yet another aspect of literacy. It represents power as well as modernism to me now.
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Thursday 12 July 2007
Week 5 Reflection: Wow! There Really Needs to be a Change in the Description of Literacy
This week's reading really took me by surprise. I had definitely thought about how the internet could affect reading, most importantly focusing on how a student would process the information they received online. I thought about both the layout or presentation of the information and the quality of the information. I also considered how hypertext could affect a student's ability to process the information at hand or even feel overwhelmed by too much information. I liked that Kajder provided concrete examples in Chapter 4 of her book about how to best use hypertext in the teaching of writing using technology. Julia’s hypertext project about New York was a great example of how this assignment might actually play itself out in a classroom. I can see how an activity like this would motivate students to use literature and writing. I also appreciated her section on “Reading Skills” because initially the idea of presenting such a task in a lower level reading class seemed impossible to me. I don’t think it could be done without the use of graphic organizers and such because of the non-linear aspect of hypertext.
Yet, after reading K&V's article, my conception of the internet as providing non-linear text has changed. At least from a Western perspective, there is a linear format to the presentation of material, both visual and textual online. Like other forms of literacy, they gave me the impression that there can also be rules online to provide readers with an easier way to process the information they read. Their article also made me think about how the internet is perceived, read, interpreted in other parts of the world. Their article presented the idea of a global language, yet even though the information is perceived differently the internet is one of the closest things to a global language that we have. The information although not interpreted the same can be translated for most viewers to read. This gives us access to others worlds, other forms of thinking, other forms of presenting information. I like the idea that this article presented about the idea of global language and how this relates directly to literacy and literature, both accessible to other cultures and ethnicities. It makes me think of the soul that the internet actually does have, in contradiciton to " what Sven Birkets (1994) refers to as a ‘battle between technology and the soul” (34). Kajder mentions that “Birkherts (1994) cautions that hypertext works to eradicate what we know as literature and literacy, arguing that ‘the premise behind textual interchange is that the author possesses wisdom, an insight, a way of looking at experience that the reader wants…. This is the point of writing and reading’” (34). I think that lookinng at the internet as a global portal almost, a capsule to allow us to travel and explore other forms of literacy, then the idea of the reader still bringing their own background and experiences to the text and the images that they interpret still hasnt' changed. Even the reader's choice about what hypertext to choose will differ depending on the who the reader is and how they encounter the information at hand.
Yet, after reading K&V's article, my conception of the internet as providing non-linear text has changed. At least from a Western perspective, there is a linear format to the presentation of material, both visual and textual online. Like other forms of literacy, they gave me the impression that there can also be rules online to provide readers with an easier way to process the information they read. Their article also made me think about how the internet is perceived, read, interpreted in other parts of the world. Their article presented the idea of a global language, yet even though the information is perceived differently the internet is one of the closest things to a global language that we have. The information although not interpreted the same can be translated for most viewers to read. This gives us access to others worlds, other forms of thinking, other forms of presenting information. I like the idea that this article presented about the idea of global language and how this relates directly to literacy and literature, both accessible to other cultures and ethnicities. It makes me think of the soul that the internet actually does have, in contradiciton to " what Sven Birkets (1994) refers to as a ‘battle between technology and the soul” (34). Kajder mentions that “Birkherts (1994) cautions that hypertext works to eradicate what we know as literature and literacy, arguing that ‘the premise behind textual interchange is that the author possesses wisdom, an insight, a way of looking at experience that the reader wants…. This is the point of writing and reading’” (34). I think that lookinng at the internet as a global portal almost, a capsule to allow us to travel and explore other forms of literacy, then the idea of the reader still bringing their own background and experiences to the text and the images that they interpret still hasnt' changed. Even the reader's choice about what hypertext to choose will differ depending on the who the reader is and how they encounter the information at hand.
Tuesday 10 July 2007
Week 6: Online Resources
One of the pages I checked out online was www.easybib.com an online bibliography writer. I thought that it would be a site that my students might benefit from and one that they might already be using on their own. I could definitely see a site like this attracting not only my students but students in general. In one of my classes last semester I remember there being so much confusion as to how a particular source should have been cited. Someone in the class mentioned that they wished there was a place where they could just fill in the information that they needed and it would create the citation for them. Everyone laughed at the idea of not having to go through the trouble of citing information and avoiding the confusion that it can sometimes cause. I think we all laughed because it seemed so far-fetched. I have to admit that I caught myself smiling while filling in the information because it really did fill it all in for me.
The site was well organized because of how easy it was to follow and to insert information. Although I usually felt hat students need to do things raw, meaning on paper, before using technology to assist them, I think this site could be really beneficial for students. It would eliminate the constant review of rules that many students find themselves doing in order to complete their bibliography page. It might even assist them in retaining the information necessary for their bibliography because they would most likely have to fill out the same information consistently if they had over five sources for example. It cites in both MLA and APA formats. It also allows you to type in the information and later click a button that converts it into a Word document, saving the student the trouble of cutting and pasting or copying the information by hand in order to type it into their document. In terms of ease, this site has it all.
The drawback that it has, however, is that it is only free temporarily. To access all of its features, including the choice of APA or MLA style, you have to pay a fee of $7.99 for the year. Although I thought the cost was affordable, I also think that it is unnecessary considering that you’re simply filling in information that gets automatically reconfigured. In general, I’m a skeptical person about paying for internet programs. Though it did make me wonder how long I could continue using the site without paying for it and continue to receive its major benefit, in my opinion, which is the ease that it provides in creating a bibliography. It never booted me out of the page or limited my creation of my bibliography because I wasn’t a member.
I’d also like to mention another website that I found while in search of information for the easybib.com site. Some of you may be familiar with it, but I wasn’t. The site is called www.enotes.com and works along the lines of Cliff notes, a crutch of mine when I took AP English in high school. The site essentially works the same way but has much more interactive information that what any book could offer. It included a longer summary or quick summary of the story, quizzes, analysis, historical content, topics for further study and bibliography of the text all in the form of hypertext. The site had an overload of information that limited my ability to take it all in. I added it to my favorites because it’s definitely a site that I need to look at with more depth. I saw so many benefits for including it into my classes, yet am not sure if I would want my students using it because it could easily enable able them to use the summary on the site over actually reading the text. However, I can see how it might be beneficial for my own research or even for using it after we read the text as a class. My fear is that they would access it for other classes or other literature we read in class, limiting the actual book reading that they do on their own.
The site was well organized because of how easy it was to follow and to insert information. Although I usually felt hat students need to do things raw, meaning on paper, before using technology to assist them, I think this site could be really beneficial for students. It would eliminate the constant review of rules that many students find themselves doing in order to complete their bibliography page. It might even assist them in retaining the information necessary for their bibliography because they would most likely have to fill out the same information consistently if they had over five sources for example. It cites in both MLA and APA formats. It also allows you to type in the information and later click a button that converts it into a Word document, saving the student the trouble of cutting and pasting or copying the information by hand in order to type it into their document. In terms of ease, this site has it all.
The drawback that it has, however, is that it is only free temporarily. To access all of its features, including the choice of APA or MLA style, you have to pay a fee of $7.99 for the year. Although I thought the cost was affordable, I also think that it is unnecessary considering that you’re simply filling in information that gets automatically reconfigured. In general, I’m a skeptical person about paying for internet programs. Though it did make me wonder how long I could continue using the site without paying for it and continue to receive its major benefit, in my opinion, which is the ease that it provides in creating a bibliography. It never booted me out of the page or limited my creation of my bibliography because I wasn’t a member.
I’d also like to mention another website that I found while in search of information for the easybib.com site. Some of you may be familiar with it, but I wasn’t. The site is called www.enotes.com and works along the lines of Cliff notes, a crutch of mine when I took AP English in high school. The site essentially works the same way but has much more interactive information that what any book could offer. It included a longer summary or quick summary of the story, quizzes, analysis, historical content, topics for further study and bibliography of the text all in the form of hypertext. The site had an overload of information that limited my ability to take it all in. I added it to my favorites because it’s definitely a site that I need to look at with more depth. I saw so many benefits for including it into my classes, yet am not sure if I would want my students using it because it could easily enable able them to use the summary on the site over actually reading the text. However, I can see how it might be beneficial for my own research or even for using it after we read the text as a class. My fear is that they would access it for other classes or other literature we read in class, limiting the actual book reading that they do on their own.
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