Yesim,

I agree to many of your comments and especially to preserving the human side of our interactions, including teaching and learning. Digital media has become our society’s obsession as it is difficult for most people to draw a line between need and want. I am an ardent believer that happiness is not having the most, but needing the least, and I think it also applies to teaching. More websites, more blogs, more gadgets can end up being distracting. I am teaching a full class for the first time this semester and I am really struggling with not having enough time to prepare for my class due to the heavy digital component of the course. I know next time I teach it I’ll simplify the electronic side of the class a lot. So far, some of the best college classes I’ve taken were those in which the professor showed up to class with only a bullet-point list of things he/she wanted to cover that day and talked about them and asked students questions on those concepts.

The world is like a pendulum, going from one side to the other, never stopping in the middle. Perhaps that is the same for teaching and the pendulum has gone too far out in regards to connected learning.

O Yesim, you are speaking to my soul!!!!!

I also have a no technology policy in my class, students learn to take notes by hand and I encourage them to talk with each other in and outside of class about the materials we read.

I so agree with you, as you found on my blog, that internet connectedness is not real connectedness. I also encourage students to learn each other’s names and require them to use each other’s names when speaking in class. It is so easy to yell at someone online because you do not really know them, much harder when you look at them and call them by name in the class.

One last thought: “It should be a tool, not a world wide web that is wider than the human.” YES YES YES!!!!!

– Formal education is often disconnected and lacking in relevance.
– Learning is meaningful when it is part of valued relationships, shared practice, culture, and identity.
– Young people need connection and translation between in-school and out-of-school learning.

I really connect with all three of the points and am struggling how to incorporate them into the class I am teaching this semester. In my Intro to Women’s and Gender Studies class, I feel it is incredibly important to give a feminist history of America before we jump into the current issues of feminism, but I struggle to make that connection apparent to my students.

Many of them grew up, like me, with the idea that “history is boring, man!” and not until I was in y MA program did I discover how important it was to understand what came before in an effort to make sense of the now.

The challenge for me, I am quickly learning, is to be very explicit and transparent in why I am teaching what I am teaching.
Thanks for your thoughts!

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I like that you mention the humility required when you make a blog post. Because blogging is such a part of the larger, connected world, it does take a dose of humility to put your thoughts out there. In an effort to write the first entry in what likely might become a conversation through comments, trackbacks, pingbacks and others citing your blog, you have to be humble. Engaging with a bloviator is no fun at all.

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Hi Katie, thanks for sharing your thoughts. I am struggling on the issue of blogging too: A part of me resists to do sth “for the sake of doing”, another part of me looks for a way to use this opportunity for benefit.. I am still contemplating btw two parts. Will see.. Thanks again, yesim

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Thank you Betsyh for letting us know what GEDI stands for, I could not really find that in the handouts given in first class nor on the class website!

Totally agree with you on the importance of the connection between the research and the teaching. I literally did not like my major Environmental engineering just by sitting in the classroom listening to the professors talking stuff on the textbook in undergraduate years. It was not until I had chance to be exposed to research ideas in a lab when I developed my interest for this major and decided to go to graduate school.

Najla — I really appreciate your riff on the “slow hunch” and am grateful that you brought in Steven Johnson’s work here. I find his analysis both inspiring and reassuring. It confirms my sense that most “breakthroughs” have a long pre-history, and nearly all rely on some measure of human-human connectivity. It also gives me the courage to hang in there for the “collaborative maturation” of the slow hunch even if at times I feel overwhelmed and distracted by all of this connectivity!
The questions you raise at the end are even more important, and I hope someone else takes those up (or brings them up in class).

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Lead on, Homero! That’s so cool that you found a research collaborator in Australia through your blog. Thanks for sharing this.

Thanks so much for sharing this recommendation! I will help with the course network if you can lean in on the Star Wars references. My galaxy is still far, far away.