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Beginning the Online Conversation

lgleysteen's picture

This is my second time using Serendip for one of my classes.  Before I took interdisciplinary perspectives on gender and sexuality last year I was really not looking forward to having to blog each week.  I did not think anyone else would ever read the things that I posted.  I was surprised to find myself in a conversation with my entire class that existed outside the walls of our classroom.  Every week we had to do a blog post and our posts often created topics that would fuel discussions inside and outside of class.   One week, one of my classmates wrote in her blog post about how much she disliked one of the books we read.  A few days later, the author of that book responded to her post stating the reasons she wrote the things my classmate disliked in her book.  I am excited to see where the online Literacies and Education class discussion will take us.

I am also looking forward to really understanding what this class is about.   I want to truly break down what literacies actually mean.  Could you consider socially illiterate when they can read and write but they have no comprehensions of meaning and symbolism through body language?    What does multi-literacy mean and how is it achieved within an academic setting such as Bryn Mawr?  What are the implications of not having computer literacies in the growing technological era?  These questions are just starting points for me with this course and they will be some of the points I plan on addressing throughout the semester.

Comments

alesnick's picture

connections and questions

I'm glad you are bringing prior experience of an academic blogger to our class. In the gender and sexuality course, how did students come to read each other's blogs? Was that assigned? Did it happen organically? Suggestions for our course?  I'm intrigued by your entry questions.  Each one seems to be in some way about challenge, or barrier.  Could you write each one as a bullet and discuss its significance/why it matters to you -- perhaps as part of your next post?  And could you include possible next steps in thinking or acting that you might take to continue exploring them? Exciting openings.