Remediation, Genre' and motivation

I don't know what to say about this writing. I appreciate the fact that the teachers are inquiring weblogs and trying to see where students are at and, we can see that many students are more motivated when it cames to free writing. I, personally have been more motivated to blog since I have been given a blogging partner. I feel I have a bigger responsibility to get it done.
Not much to note on this, I'm curious to hear what everyone else has to say. Which reminds me, I do enjoy reading my classmates blogs and I find that when I do I get a wider understanding of the reading.

April 4th

I found the reading "Monitoring Order" interesting in that I can see how changing the arrangement of the writing makes it more interesting. Also how making decisions about when to move to the left or the center can spark interest in the reading or seem to make a part of the reading more important. I feel that when the arrangement is made in these ways, it's kind of like watching someone's body language.
What did the author mean by "eye of the mind"?
I found it fun to move from one page to the next by clicking the boxes. It gave me the feeling that I was a part of the reading getting me involved. Good Idea!

readings for March 7th

I enjoyed the readings this week and how the virtual experience with writing and communicating has been brought to my attention. I can relate to Meg Hourihan's peice in that the format is very interesting and different with the reverse- cronological order. She says that "having the newest information at the top of the page gives the reader sense of immediacy." I have found this to be true. Knowing that the latest post is at the top of the page I feel an urgency to check for updated when reading someone's blog. I can also agree with the idea that we are not writing a professional document when we blog, we are basically responding to comments and striking conversation at times with a few sentences, or perhaps a couple of sentences.
As far as the article about teens and My Space, I am curios as to why teens are always changing their minds about which web page to use. I would asume they are all about the same. I feel that kids need to be educated before they venture onto the web for any reason. This article made me thing of my own kids and how I have always been afraid of what they may get into while surfing the web and using My Space or others like it. There was a story about someone taking pictures from a My Space profile and setting up a fake page. It's creepy to me too. My son plays a vidio game online and can comunicate with other players. Not long ago someone wanted his address so he could send some accessories for the game. Thank God my son knew better than to give it away.
Is a blog a virtual community? From what we've read, I'd say only if you are participating by reading and posting a blog. I think that our class has a virtual community set up as long as we are all participating.

Eldred and Toner

I do see our reading turning around from talk about how we're "not paying attention" to how we are actually using technology. The biggest idea i'm getting from the reading is the difference in how technology is being used in the classroom and how there is no set regulation as to what we should teach or how we can implement technology into our teaching. What we are seeing is the fact that institutions are divided into two different catagories, "technology rich" and "technology bound"(34) Eldred and Toner point out that institutions that are "technology bound" might have instructors that use the most convienent resources to fulfill administrator's expectations, rather than explore other options.(34)
A point to make here comes from the title. Some instructor's are letting the technology be the teacher rather than teaching students how to use the technology, and possibly explore and research new things. Obviously things are changing because Dr. Harrington is asking this class to do just that, explore and research new things.

Referring to the middle of page 37 where the authors talk about online discussions and the benefits, such as getting more class participation. I agree that teachers may be able to get those who are more quiet in the classroom to say something, but it is also pointed out that teachers need not ignore the fact that on line discussion may make a student lazy. Eldred and Toner give some examples of how the teacher might detour students lazy habits. These examples relate to my own experience. I have not posted one blog until now, but now that I've been assigned to comunicate with another person I have decided that I better make more of an effort. I haven't blogged because I can never do it from home (I have realized how inefficient my computer is)So here I am at school making sure that I participate in the class assignment. The point is, because Dr. Harrington has put more of a responsibility on me to get this done, I am more willing to do whatever it takes. I believe what the authors are basically saying in the article is that instuctors need to use the technology they have to teach literacy, but that's not all, they need to go further not letting technology make us lazy. They talk about plagiarism and how students will copy papers from the internet. Instructors have to be careful not to let technology do the teaching but rather they still do the teaching.