Blog #3

Pratt: I use this term to refer to social spaces where cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in context of highly asymmetrical of power, such as colonialism, slavery, or their aftermaths as they are lived out in many parts of the world today.

Scarpa: Here Pratt talks about this idea of contact zones, places where people, as well as cultures, interact and meet. She uses this term to remodel the idea of contact zones in your own home and in teaching as well. She used the example, which I think is amazing, of her son and his friend trading baseball cards, this could be their contact zone. Their meeting point to share and interact through this hobby. She explains how her son learned about racism and the great depression from behind home plate, his contact zone was able to put him in place where he could understand racism and the economical downfall through baseball. He was probably able to see Jackie Robinson's struggle into the Major Leagues and understand, maybe better than the underground railroad and Harriet Tubman.

Russell: 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.

Scarpa: Russell brings up a great point here, we even discussed it in class. Should writing only be taught in English class? I think that students handing in a lab report, history papers, and research papers should be held to the same standards as far as grammatical and spelling (to some extent). It's hard to have a different set of rules for each class as far as writing, because soon enough you're going to get used to not getting graded on the little things, and you let them slide in the papers where it matters the most such as a literature paper or an English assignment. These teachers from other subjects should equally enforce the English rules to keep the student constantly worrying about making sure they're not making these mistakes. Russell mentions this "literacy crisis," and by this I think he means exactly what this quote is saying, that other teachers, besides English, don't have any interest in teaching writing, they can't be bothered, and this is part of the cause. It's only getting worse, I know people studying to be teachers right now who don't know the difference between there, their, and they're- the roots go deeper. Do we really want these people teacher the children of the future?

Gee: So thinking and reasoning are inherently social. But they are also inherently distributed, and more and more so in our modern technological world.

Scarpa: Following this statement, Gee makes a really excellent point. He says that we use various tools and technology to do some of our thinking for us- Great! I love this, and was really hoping something like this would come up because I think it's so totally true. I do, but don't agree with Gee when he says we don't need to know everything in our field. While I agree it is difficult to know everything, but if you're only in one field lets say linguistics, I think you should know the most you could about linguistics. I don't like that he just settles, and says that if he doesn't know something about linguistics he'll ask another colleague, but what if every colleague though that way, then who would know the answers? This also bring us another topic regarding using tools and technology to think for you. Spell Check for example, I'm not totally against it, I'd be a hypocrite if I said I was, because I use it as well, but to an extent I like to challenge myself. I'm sure I could be a totally nerd for saying this, but I like to figure out the spelling myself first, just so I know, and my last resort is to use my spell check. I think it is a great tool, but very harmful as well, spell check isn't going to be on the SAT's or the English Regent, or on classroom exams, so what happens when I child looks for that crutch, and it's not there? Is the teacher going to grade them well for trying, even if the words are totally butchered? I think helpful tools are necessary, but when did people get to lazy to use a dictionary? I think one of the goals of teaching to make sure they can think for themselves without outside tools and technology for thinking- it's great to get ideas and brainstorm, but how far will technology go before it's actually doing the work for them?

Williams: Our eyes like to see order; it creates a calm, secure feeling.

Scarpa: I think this is a nice way to bring alignment to life "our eyes like to see order," it's simple, but true. If you were to look at a page and and things were all over the place, you know the title was in the middle and the sub-heading was to the left, and another link was more to the middle it would just be crazy too much going on, but when we see thing aligned and in some kind of organized order you feel better, and you know that the page is done right done professional.

Reflection

I think the style of these journals is really great, you get to see the authors thoughts, and then your interpretation of what you read, it's also a great way to highlight the things you did read, and the parts that stuck out for class discussions. I think its a good way to see what the students feels about the readings without having to have everyone explain it out in class. It's an effective assignment, I would definietly use in the future. I just think its really great for keeping track if you're reading more than one book, or article because it is hard to remember who said what, and where you read it; so, yeah, I think it's really great source to refer back to.