Kevin Brooks
Dept. of English
NDSU
IM: kabbie1313

English 110: Technology and 21st Century Literacy
Fall 2002

Course Description

Assignments

1. Weblogs:what's the use?
2. MyNewLiteracy
3. Self in the Age of Information
4. Portfolios

Grading Criteria

Schedule

1. Aug.28-Sept.27
2. Sept 30-Nov.29 (New on Oct. 12)
3. Dec.2-Dec.16

Course Reading List

Useful sites

MyTeachingBlog
Blogger.com
Eaton Blog Portal
NDSU's Technology Learning Center
Guide to Writing Research Papers (MLA Style)
Great List of Weblog Resources
Schoolblogs.com

Class Notes and Handouts (Unit 3)

1. Reading "Self in the Information Age."
2. Nov 18 Activities
3. Global and local revision guides.

Archive of notes and handouts.

Companion English 110 Sites

1. Cindy Nichols
2. Sybil Priebe
3. Our Class blog

Responsbilities for "Self In the Information Age"

1. Read the essay for class, Friday November 15th.
2. Write a summary of the essay: post it to your blog, email it to me, or hand it in.
3. Be prepared to lead class discussion on your group's section of the essay (see below).

Kenneth J. Gergen's essay "Self in the Age of Information" is very academic in the sense that his diction (his word choice) is sophisticated, and he tries to explain some fairly broad patterns in our culture. The essay will present some challenges to you as readers, but he also tries to help readers out with clearly defined sections, and subsections within sections. I will describe what he is doing in the introduction of the essay, and then I would like the following groups to take responsibility for helping the rest of the class understand their assigned section.

Introduction: Gergen does something we have seen other academics do: he starts by trying to position himself in a debate about the effects that technology is having on our cultural understanding of "self." He says that Walter Ong's scholarship has been influential in convincing other scholars that "new forms of thought emerged in the Western cultural shift from a primary dependency on oral interchange to print technology." In other words, Ong convinced us that technology changed the way people think, but it did not fundamentally change our view of the "self." David Olson, however, "proposes in The World on Paper [that] the shift from oral culture to print technology may have changed cultural beliefs about human beings."

Gergen, in this essay, is going to extend Olson's, rather than Ong's argument, and consider the ways in which electronic means of communication are transforming "our fundamental understanding of the psychological self". He defines the traditional notion of "self" as "a bounded and integral agent, capable of conscious self-direction and self-control" but he thinks that our new technologies are undermining this sense of self. In the last paragraph of the introduction he forecasts what his essay will cover (great example of a forecasting paragraph!).

As you read the essay, and focus on your section, try to do 2 things:

1. Understanding what Gergen is trying to say.
2. Evaluate his claims: is he describing the world and a sense of "self" as you know it? He says in the conclusion that he is just trying to offer readers a lens through which to view and understand the world—does this seem like a helpful lens?

John, Matt, Garret—Community in Crisis

Cullen, Drew, Derick—Truth: From Certainty to Social Construction

Chad, David, Teresa, Derrick, Paul—The Erosion of the Essential Self

Nate, Lydia, Cliff, Anna—Repercussions: From Conflict to Confluence.