Minds, Texts, and Technology: Understanding Practice As this is the first text that I have been able to read in this course, I can now grasp the sense of disorientation that many people spoke about during the last class. These ideas are exciting, revolutionary, even. Theories that provoke us to reformulate apparently stable categories have been a staple diet in English courses for quite a while now; to apply those theories in practical situations has been scrupulously avoided. To engage with theories that reveal the demarcation of concept boundaries and move beyond them using practical and diverse case studies is therefore extremely liberating.

From a teaching perspective, to wrap my head around the idea that there is no stable concept of learning, only changing participation in everyday culturally-designed settings is liberating and frustrating in equal measure. Liberating, because anyone who has spent any time in a classroom as teacher or student realizes that some traditional education practices are simply not effective, and many of the essays in this book show – at least theoretically – different approaches to knowledge production. I must chime in with other posts on this page, however, in expressing some sense of frustration with the scope of the book: I sometimes felt that my head was spiraling out of control, that these theories are exciting but entirely context driven and therefore not applicable across different fields. (And the good-ole Marxist dawg lying dormant within me keeps barking: if we are always going to be working in institutional contexts then will we not always be circumscribed in how we apply situation-driven theories?)

I apologize for the vagueness of the above entry; I need to crystallize some ideas before I respond to others. Maybe then I may make more sense to myself….

As this is the first text that I have been able to read in this course, I can now grasp the sense of disorientation that many people spoke about during the last class. These ideas are exciting, revolutionary, even. Theories that provoke us to reformulate apparently stable categories have been a staple diet in English courses for quite a while now; to apply those theories in practical situations has been scrupulously avoided. To engage with theories that reveal the demarcation of concept boundaries and move beyond them using practical and diverse case studies is therefore extremely liberating.

From a teaching perspective, to wrap my head around the idea that there is no stable concept of learning, only changing participation in everyday culturally-designed settings is liberating and frustrating in equal measure. Liberating, because anyone who has spent any time in a classroom as teacher or student realizes that some traditional education practices are simply not effective, and many of the essays in this book show – at least theoretically – different approaches to knowledge production. I must chime in with other posts on this page, however, in expressing some sense of frustration with the scope of the book: I sometimes felt that my head was spiraling out of control, that these theories are exciting but entirely context driven and therefore not applicable across different fields. (And the good-ole Marxist dawg lying dormant within me keeps barking: if we are always going to be working in institutional contexts then will we not always be circumscribed in how we apply situation-driven theories?)

I apologize for the vagueness of the above entry; I need to crystallize some ideas before I respond to others. Maybe then I may make more sense to myself….
Minds, Texts, and Technology

Minds, Texts, and Technology

Minds, Texts, and Technology
As this is the first text that I have been able to read in this course, I can now grasp the sense of disorientation that many people spoke about during the last class. These ideas are exciting, revolutionary, even. Theories that provoke us to reformulate apparently stable categories have been a staple diet in English courses for quite a while now; to apply those theories in practical situations has been scrupulously avoided. To engage with theories that reveal the demarcation of concept boundaries and move beyond them using practical and diverse case studies is therefore extremely liberating.

From a teaching perspective, to wrap my head around the idea that there is no stable concept of learning, only changing participation in everyday culturally-designed settings is liberating and frustrating in equal measure. Liberating, because anyone who has spent any time in a classroom as teacher or student realizes that some traditional education practices are simply not effective, and many of the essays in this book show – at least theoretically – different approaches to knowledge production. I must chime in with other posts on this page, however, in expressing some sense of frustration with the scope of the book: I sometimes felt that my head was spiraling out of control, that these theories are exciting but entirely context driven and therefore not applicable across different fields. (And the good-ole Marxist dawg lying dormant within me keeps barking: if we are always going to be working in institutional contexts then will we not always be circumscribed in how we apply situation-driven theories?)

I apologize for the vagueness of the above entry; I need to crystallize some ideas before I respond to others. Maybe then I may make more sense to myself….