Out of the Closet in the Classroom

 

I think that, especially now, more and more people are beginning to become comfortable with today’s society that more and more people are coming out as homosexual or bisexual- being able to be anonymous online allows people with an outlet to speak their minds without being help back. Since it’s such a controversial topic, it’s a great way to teach students how to professionally debate with their opinions. If the discussion of sexuality is withheld from students then “they fail to realize the social implications of their heterosexuality as well as the social nature of all sexual orientation.” (pg. 2). Sexuality is another form of a persons identity, so students may find it beneficial to learn more about homosexuality if a heterosexual life is all that their familiar with. This can be done by reading articles about homosexuals and how their lives are different and oppressed compared to others. In any classroom, we need to keep sexuality not tucked into a corner. Alexander says that computerized classrooms give homo/bisexual students the opportunity to speak publicly and to speak safely. This then gives the students the self esteem to let their opinions be heard and increases their participation in discussions involving sexuality.

Alexander and Shepherds articles are both very different, and I don’t think that it’s very fair to compare the two literary works. But, “Out of the Closet…” may have been better supported if he had conducted a survey to questions like: Is sexuality uncomfortable to talk about in a classroom, What are your views on homosexuality, and more broad ones like, Do you feel safe expressing your opinions in the classroom. But, taking a survey on sexuality may cause discomfort in classes, even if it is anonymous.

Race, Rhetoric and Technology

One of the amazing things about technology and online platforms is that they’re completely anonymous – unless you chose to identify yourself, your personal life doesn’t follow you around through the web. Although we have this option though, we chose to share our lives and opinions on different media websites. Banks explains BlackPlanet as a SNS where African American individuals can go and talk about things“relevant to their lives” (68).  This website uses its own form of Black English and allows African Americans to write and talk however they want to without being judged online and told that they’re wrong in the way they communicate (it’s almost like a safe haven for language).

There’s tons of hidden pocket websites all over the internet of places where individuals go to seek refuge, whether it be a race-specific website or creating a false twitter profile, part of the beauty of technology is that you can pour yourself out onto all these different platforms and nobody has to know who you are. How does that relate to race though? Banks spend a minute talking about how race and technology are changing the theories of cyberspace, and the more frequently we use the internet, the more the mold is changing. And one theory he mentions is that race would be irrelevant to online discourse. I believe that this has aspects that are true and not. Online discourse is something that as long as we have cyberspace, we’ll have this issue. Some humans like picking on others to help them feel better, regardless of race. But, there’s  also those people in the world who have strong feelings against any are but their own. Although that’s something that causes the main issues within cyberspace, it’s not really something that’ll change unless the whole world changes.

I think that the most important point Banks makes toward the end of chapter 4 is that we need to improve the design of online courses. We’re always advancing in technological development, and that’s something that we need to focus on – before we get too far ahead of ourselves , we need to correct some of the issues we have now. I don’t think that Banks is referring exclusively to “online courses” to mean education platform, but rather anything that has the ability to put new information into your head. We need to work on making websites inviting for everyone and a safe place for everyone because if that doesn’t happen soon, the internet will just start to become segregated (used lightly).  We can’t afford that.

Do We Consider Social Media to be a kind of Composition?

 

BEFORE SHEPHERD:

Regarding Facebook and its relations to school, I think it’s a nonexistent correlation. Facebook doesn’t really teach any aspects of becoming better writers and helping students to become more literate. I feel that more times than not (although it’s changed a lot from when FB was first created), people use short hand typing on their posts. What could an individual possible learn about grammar and writing from scrolling through a social media website. Mind you, knowing that this is my opinion on the topic now, after reading this article I can make a safe assumption that my mind will be changed. That’s just how things work, right?  But, as of this moment, I don’t think that Facebook should play a role in academic learning. I believe that combining any social media with curriculum has the chance to fall down a very dark path that you can’t escape from. In a controlled, mature environment like the class that we’re in right now, I think working through blog posts and communicating through twitter is working extremely well for us. But, if we’re talking about high school students, I think that more times than not they would just get distracted  working on social media.

AFTER SHEPHERD:

After reading through “Facebook Use Among First-Year Composition Students”, my idea of what the article was about was completely altered. When you think of social networking sites, you never think about the correlations that they have to composition and your literary skills. Shepherd does an amazing job of explaining how the two topics can tie together. Although some students may see Facebook as a kind of composition, those students who don’t enjoy writing as much as other students and that don’t consider themselves strong writers are less likely to see FB as a literary substance. R. P. Shepherd explains how ” [students are] very aware of ideas such as audience awareness and awareness of rhetorical situation” (C. and C. 94). What I think this means is that, although students may not make the connection between FB and english composition in their heads, this social media network is teaching us about how to target personal thoughts to specific audiences. Whether it be a political stance, explaining a funny or sad story, or making a huge life announcement, Facebook (and other SNSs) really help us to determine who we’d like our audience to be and to figure out how we can place our thoughts into words to attract the right kind of response.

 

 

 

 

Shepherd, Ryan P. “Facebook Use Among First-Year Composition Students.” Arizona State University. © 2015 Elsevier Inc., n.d. Web.

When Microsoft Took Over the World

Microsoft Grammar Checker (MSGC) isn’t a program that I’ve paid much attention to, most of the time I just use the Pages program on my Mac, but when I do use Microsoft (which is becoming more frequent because UNG offers it for free), it’s not one of the things that I think about. One of the features that I notice most about MSGC is when it highlights a double space, or when you mix up a letter in a word and it automatically corrects it for you. But, I actually don’t know a lot about the Word program; other than changing my text style, insetting graphs and inserting pictures, I’m pretty much useless when it comes to these types of things. So, when I remember about the grammar checker that’s built into the program I get excited! Then, naturally, I continue working and completely forget it’s there.

I think that the use of MSGC can be very helpful, although theres a fine line between when it’s beneficial to your writing and when it becomes harmful. Teachers need to encourage students to read through and try and catch their won mistakes before they auto-correct their work. After they read through their work, I think that it’s acceptable to use a grammar checker after a manual check so that it can catch any mistakes that you may have missed. McGee quotes “the more errors there are in a sentence, the more likely that Grammar Checker is to provide incorrect suggestions” (“Recommendations” section, 1999, par. 2). That’s just one of the many reasons that a paper should be proofread again and again. More times than not, students say that they proof their work before turning it in, but that’s not always the case.

McGee and Ericsson go on to say that rather than every English teacher deletes MS Word from their computers “[they] need to take time to dig into it…rummaging around in its options and defaults to see what kind of a beast it is” (p. 465). We shouldn’t be hesitant of grammar checkers and programs that help with English, but rather dissect them and learn what abilities they have and to what extent their correcting services go to. Technology is becoming more and more a part of modern literature and grammar, and our computers and programs are only getting smarter, they learn to adapt and take in new information all the time. And although computers aren’t right 100% of the time, they’re still a great tool to help aid in English Composition.

The Perils of Not Paying Attention Aren’t What They Used To Be

 

School life and education style were completely different in the 90’s before the Clinton-Gore administration took off. So, I’d really like to focus on how the “Perils of not paying attention” are still in fact perils, but they’re just not the exact same ones that Cynthia Selfe so often refers to. The definition of peril is “expose/to expose to danger” as defined by Dictionary.com. Selfe goes to say that one of the biggest perils we face is that we chose to ignore technology, “computers rapidly becoming invisible, which is most often how we like technology to be” (Selfe 413). That still takes partial effect in today’s world though; we chose to ignore things that are unfamiliar to us. But, as a millennial, what’s familiar to me wasn’t familiar to Selfe when computers had just been introduced into the school system. When I think of the title “Perils of not paying attention”, my mind goes down the complete opposite path.

To the millennials and the students who have grown up working on computers in class, looking up information online, and typing all their essays, ignoring technology is simply that we’ve become so reliant on technology and its so familiar to us that we just plainly forget about it. That being said, I think that the biggest peril for technology and education is that we become too reliant on it, and aren’t ever able to live without it.

The world is constantly coming out with the next big technology advancement, and it’s extremely hard to stay up-to-date with all the new inventions and ideas that come out; an article from 1999 can easily become outdated – not so much that it becomes irrelevant, because there are still many aspects of Selfe’s work that can be taken and applied to technology in schools today, but because the education field become so reliant on technology that we wouldn’t be able to function without it.

 

 

 

Selfe, Cynthia L. College Composition and Communication, Vol. 50, No. 3, A Usable Past: CCC at 50: Part 1 (Feb., 1999), Pp. 411-436. N.p.: National Council of Teachers of English, 1999. Print.