Blog #3 + Reflection

Gee: Schools tend to care only about what is inside students’ heads as their heads and bodies are isolated from others, from tools and technologies, and from rich environments that help make them powerful nodes in networks (202).

Albanese: For the most part, I would say that I agree with this statement. However, I feel as if Gee is oversimplifying the problem for many reasons, including three very significant reasons which I feel Gee has carelessly neglected. First, I believe it is safe to say that as of recent years, those concerned with education have taken multiple measures to try to correct this issue by actively educating teachers (with professional development) and teachers in training (with improved teacher training programs) about the benefits of collaborative and cooperative learning, which would encourage them to implement activities like reciprocal teaching, the jigsaw and others like it, in their classrooms. However, making a widespread transition into new methods of teaching doesn’t happen overnight, it takes time and patience. And second, as far as seeking other people for assistance, I think it is important to find a good balance between collaborative and cooperative learning, and independent learning. I don’t think it is wise to encourage one way of learning over the other because it is highly important for students to become experts in both arenas. We most definitely want students to know how to reach out to the right people for help, when help is needed, to know who and where to go to for that assistance, and to be able to work along with others cooperatively and productively. However, I believe it is equally important that they learn how to seek out knowledge on their own, without always relying-or relying too much on others. Third, it is difficult to assess how much students have actually learned when they are allowed to consult other people and use all sorts of tools. Yes, learning how to use tools is very important in and of itself but in order to excel in the world students need to learn how to be creative and figure some things out without the help of another person or a tool.

Gee: We must more and more come to see ourselves not in terms of a linear progression up a ‘career ladder’ in one single job but as a ‘portfolio’ composed of the rearrangeable skills and identities we have acquired in our trajectory through diverse projects inside and outside of ‘workplaces,’ as we move from job to job, project to project, and career to career in a fast-changing world (203).

Albanese: I believe that the ideas found in this passage of the text can be applied to people in today’s economic crisis. Those individuals that were laid off should personally understand the relevance of this quote. Many of those who were laid off were forced to find jobs in new careers. Every day many others leave one career to enter a new one by choice. Therefore, it is important that people see themselves as Gee has described as opposed to limiting themselves to only one expertise.

Gee: They allow players to customize the game to fit their learning and playing styles (216).

Albanese: I found this quote interesting because it reminded me of how, in the way schools are set up today, teachers are the ones who customize lessons to fit different learning styles as opposed to students doing the customizing for themselves, as they do in their video games.

Gee: In fact, it is a crucial learning principle that people learn best when they have an opportunity to talk (and write) about what they are learning (219).

Albanese: This closing statement by Gee, coincidentally, seems like a really convenient and great segue into the ideas of WAC.

Williams: Do you tend to center everything? A centered alignment is the most common alignment that beginners use –it’s very safe, it feels comfortable (36).

Albanese: When I read this statement, I was able to identify with it. I do usually center everything. It was interesting to have this pointed out. Now that I am aware of this tendency, I can consciously work to eliminate it.

Williams: This text is justified. Some people call it quad left and right, and some call it blocked- the text lines up on both sides (40).

Albanese: I have never heard of justified text prior to reading this passage and if I have seen it before I wouldn’t have known it. However, now that I have both seen it and learned its title, I can identify it and apply it in my own work, when applicable. This text is helping us begin to enter the discourse community of designers.

Williams: First paragraphs are traditionally not indented. The purpose of indenting a paragraph is to tell you there is a new paragraph, but you always know the first one is a new paragraph. On a typewriter, an indent was five spaces. With the proportional type you are using on your computer, the standard typographic indent is one em (an em is as wide as the point size of your type), which is more like two spaces (45).

Albanese: I never knew that ‘first paragraphs are traditionally not indented.’ This is the first I have ever heard about that. However, after reading the explanation, it seems to make perfect sense to me. I also never knew what an ‘em’ was prior to reading about it. This is good to know.

Pratt: Literacy began for Sam with the newly pronounceable names on the picture cards and brought him what has been easily the broadest, most varied, most enduring, and most integrated experience of his thirteen year life (1).

Albanese: I believe that this was an excellent example of literacy. Not only was Sam able to become a part of a new discourse community, but he was also able to experience various other types of literacy through this discourse community. He was also able to make many relevant connections between this discourse community and various other school related discourse communities.

Russell: But from the first ‘literacy crisis,’ in the 1870s-precipitated by new discipline-specific writing requirements and the entry of students from previously excluded groups into the nascent mass education system- the academic disciplines have taken little direct interest in writing, either by consciously investigating their own conventions of scholarly writing or by teaching their students those conventions in a deliberate, systematic way-despite a century long tradition of complaints by faculty members and other professionals about the poor writing of students (3).

Albanese: This passage reminds me of the intense debate we were having the other night in class- concerning whether or not teachers of other disciplines, aside from English, should teach and evaluate writing in their classrooms.

Russell: But the WAC movement has deep, though rarely exposed, roots in the recurring debates over approaches to writing and pedagogy-especially in the American tradition of progressive education (3).

Albanese: I was surprised to read this fact because I have always thought that the progressive education movement was more focused on trade and job preparation and not as much on academic aspects of education. However, when I continued reading and discovered that it was Dewey that was for the WAC movement, I was not as surprised because Dewey seems to have always been one step ahead of all the other educators of his time.

Russell: In the committee’s final report before it disbanded (for lack of departments willing to use its services), the chair, Ralph Rader wrote: When student writing is deficient, then, it is deficient…in ways having directly to do with the student’s real control of the subject matter of his discipline and not in ways having to do with the special disciplines of English or speech departments. To raise the level of student writing…would be in effect to raise the student’s level of intellectual attainment in the subject matter itself. To say this is to indicate…the reason for the lack of the response to the committee program: faculty are by and large satisfied with the intellectual attainment of their students. The committee is suggesting, then…that faculty should not be so easily satisfied (8).

Albanese: I completely agree with this statement made by Ralph Rader. I think he very eloquently explained the importance of writing to learn and writing across the curriculum.

Russell: Indeed, a 1988 survey of all 2,735 institutions of higher education in the United States and Canada found that, of 1,113 that replied, 427 (38 percent) has some WAC program, and 235 of these programs had been in existence for three years or more (17).

Albanese: This is a perfect example of what I stated earlier in this blog entry. I believe that widespread educational reforms do not happen overnight, they take a lot of time to come into common practice.




Reflection

I find that the 2x entry journal is very useful in the sense that it allows us to chose particular direct quotes and immediately reflect on them by using our own personal reactions and ideas, as opposed to writing a summative journal that focuses on the overarching themes or the big picture. It provides us with the opportunity to pick and chose elements of the readings that we can best connect and respond to. I enjoy writing this type of journal because it is both useful and refreshing.
I would certainly implement this type of journal writing into my own future classroom because I believe that it has much to offer students. Aside from allowing them the freedom of choosing which ideas to reflect on, it also provides them with an opportunity to develop better paper writing skills, in the sense that they can practice defending their ideas with evidence from the text. I feel it is an excellent alternative to the typical journal structure.