1. In Tobin's chapter on teaching a composition class, he defines four metaphors that shape his own interactions and relationships with his class. Do any of the metaphors that Tobin describes -- the teacher as a performer and the students as an audience, the teacher as a dinner party host and the students as guests, the teacher as a parent and the students as adolescent children, and the teacher as a preacher and the students as a congregation -- resonate with your own teaching style? Do you have any metaphors of your own for the relationship you want to develop between you and your students?
2. In Selfe's article, she argues that "technology is either boring or frightening to most humanists" and that "as a group, we tend to hold in common a general distrust of the machine, that a preference for the non-technological still characterizes our community" (412). Do you think that this argument still holds true today, or have humanists learned to accept technology in the twenty years since Selfe published this article?
Hiya Samantha,
ReplyDeleteTo respond to your second question, I think we've progressed to where technology is more ubiquitous as Selfe says. Most of us have cellphones, if not smartphones, laptops, Facebook, Twitter, and the list goes on. This also includes students. I think it is more of a matter of us being frightened to teach with technology now, or maybe more of a matter of just not knowing how to, because though we can drive the cars, we may not know how to fix them, to paraphrase. As outlined in Arola's article, much of what we do online are within already created platforms which make things incredibly easy to use, so as English oriented teachers, and not computer programmers, we can't really explain what is happening. I am inclined to look at that as a challenge we can choose to face with our methodologies in class. We are able to use our ignorance with technology as a learning experience to undergo with our classes or students, so long as we are ready to take the risk of appearing foolish or 'old.'