277 Matching Annotations
  1. Jan 2024
  2. Oct 2023
    1. Bill Atkinson had an idea about the freedom to associate knowledge not by what comes next on the list but by the links that are associated with it. This means that information can be organized in a non-linear fashion, allowing for connections to be made between seemingly unrelated ideas. By expanding on this idea, we can create new and innovative ways of storing and accessing information, potentially leading to breakthroughs in fields such as artificial intelligence and data analysis.

  3. Jan 2023
    1. We are the medium

      restated and called back to throughout the text.

      also references the repeated theme that science / medicine / covid cannot be seperated from all other factors of the human experience.

      not only are we the medium for the pandemic, we are inseperable from it.

    1. When humans encounter life-forms that are unfamiliar or strange to us, our instinct is often to distanceourselves from them

      Can be interpreted outside of this context as social justice commentary.

      What are ways we categorize:human vs nonhuman, races, genders, etc

  4. Oct 2022
    1. ix users were “heavy” users, accounting for 61% of the totalsessions. Heavy users often kept Answer Garden running in an iconifiedstate between uses. One heavy user reported:

      Just like any social media site.

    2. 216

      So far, Answer Garden seems better used and similarly in demand as Piazza.

    3. Each user and each expert has incentives to work separately toward theconstruction of such a Garden. The users get to find answers, and expertscan rid themselves of commonly asked questions.

      This may help me with my own research needs to crowdsource peer review and create "living peer reviews."

    4. Several important considerations behind Answer Garden include:

      This feels entirely different from modern organizational memory aids like Almanac (https://almanac.io/)!

    5. ngineerschose not to go to the channel of the highest quality for technical informa-tion, but rather to go to the channel of highest accessibility (i.e., lowestpsychological cost). Allen [1977] argued that the psychological cost was inthe potential lack of reciprocity between giving and obtaining informationand in the status implications of admitting ignorance.

      My last company had a page in their wiki with acronyms and downloadable Excel spreadsheets!

    6. information technology can support organizational memory in twoways, either by making recorded knowledge retrievable or by makingindividuals with knowledge accessible

      I tried to do this in my last role as a lab manager and we have a PhD student spreadsheet I added variables to for this specific purpose.

      Check it out here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/10qMAJjYc7fTGLLSmvrD7pk8v1KeHJYLC47JMBvqxG8A/edit?usp=sharing

    1. Whatis learned is profoundly connected to the conditions in which it is learned

      In cog psych, this shows up as a small-to-moderate effect of being able to remember better when the conditions of retrieval (testing) align with the conditions of knowledge aquisition. In some studies, learning word pairs underwater and later being tested underwater was superior compared to learning word pairs underwater and being tested on the surface.

      Ref: https://www.proquest.com/docview/1293702195?pq-origsite=gscholar&fromopenview=true

    2. he ways people actuallywork usually differ fundamentally from the ways organizations describe that work in manuals,training programs, organizational charts, and job descriptions.

      Hidden curriculum -> Hidden duties and processees

    1. Preceding anyspecific historiographical method, the Zettelkasten provides the space inwhich potential constellations between these things can appear concretely,a space to play with connections as they have been formed by historic pre-decessors or might be formed in the present.

      relationship with zettelkasten in the history of historical methods?

  5. Sep 2022
    1. It is important in your summary that you make connections between the key ideas in the article.

      Yes I think this is how to Activate learning. You have just read something and just marking the texts is not enough. Put something like this reminds me of when I use to teach and try to connect a character to someone real.

  6. Jun 2022
    1. Real learning cannot happen in a vacuum. Connecting oneself and one’s new ideas with others across classrooms, across the curricula, and into the community build confidence , deepens experience, and maximizes success.
  7. May 2022
  8. Apr 2022
  9. Mar 2022
    1. writing non-fiction

      I feel like the process is similar. It's about making connections, right? So, a long walk is instructive. Letting one's mind wander and paying attention to whatever floats in. Then sifting through it all to try and make sense. I feel like the older we get, the more connections we make, as well, because we've read more widely and have experienced more things. This little stream of consciousness vomit reminded me of an exercise of several years ago, a "twisted pair." Taking seemingly unrelated things and finding connections. I think at the end of the day, pretty much everything is connected in some way. In non-fiction, maybe the trick is to identify the strands that you want to focus on in making the connections.

  10. Oct 2021
    1. Minneapolis police shot and killed Jamar Clark, which ignited two weeks of protests.

      I disagree, because this going to make the people more angry and it's not going to calm things down.

    2. people took to the streets after police shot and killed Philando Castile during a traffic stop in a nearby suburb, Falcon Heights.

      I agree, because by doing this you can make a difference.

    1. Racial bias is often hidden, unintentional and systemic.

      I agree, because if someone racist, he's not going to tell you "I'm racist".

  11. Sep 2021
    1. https://fs.blog/2013/11/taking-notes-while-reading/

      Interesting but not useful to me as it's too basic within my current system. I like that he encourages people to go back over their notes and cross link them.

    1. Jot down connections and tangential thoughts, underline key passages, and make a habit of building a dialogue with the author(s).

      Some people consider annotations to be a conversation with the author. But you're also having a conversation with yourself and your own thoughts. (Cross reference Niklas Luhmann's having a conversation with himself via his notes.)

      Further, there are platforms like Hypothes.is or social platforms like Twitter where you can move the conversation out of the page and engage with others. However, for this Hypothes.is has more power because it keeps the conversation linked to the original text and the original context (which I'll explicitly translate here as "with the text") to underline the point.

      cf:

      cum (Latin) : with

      textus (Latin) : tissue, web, texture, fabric, connection, language

      contextus (Latin) : context, connection, coherence, connexion, coherency, text

    2. Active reading helps you make connections within your latticework of mental models. Connections help retention.

      Connections ARE retention. They are memory.

    3. can help you retain more and make deeper connections.

      Often forgotten in the reading and learning processes is creating connections between our new content and what we already know. This is some of the power behind the basic idea in zettelkasten of creating links between knowledge.

  12. Aug 2021
    1. n response, I’d suggest that just as we “lose ourselves” in narratives that we find in novels, we can also lose ourselves (read: produce unexpected results) in a dictionary or other reading materials by tracing out connections and relations that exist within but across the alphabetic or logical argument imposed upon the piece.

      This point Boyle makes here is reminiscent of the concept of "intra-actions" and decentering humanistic ideals in favor for a more interactive and interconnectivity with humanity the world found in The Animal Who Writes.

  13. May 2021
  14. Mar 2021
    1. laved

      This chapter is dense with rich vocabulary, particularly noticeable while reading the following chapter. I would suggest this could be one of Dickens' tools to capture the mood of the story, in this case, there is a serious feeling of graveness and mystery. I recognized the term "laved" was similar to the Spanish "lavar" and searched for it with quickfind. This is the only occurrence of the word and its conjugations in the series while those for "wash" occur 30 times. To me this indicates to the reader that this action is very important. I also happened to notice that every time the word indolent is used, it follows some mention of Mortimer Lightfoot. It is often in connection to his buddy Eugene Wrayburn, but is used ironically by Riderhood in this chapter after a smug Wrayburn got the final word in a conversation.

  15. Oct 2020
    1. Ahrens notes that in most cases, students fail not because of a lack of ability, but because they lose a personal connection to what they are learning: “When even highly intelligent students fail in their studies, it’s most often because they cease to see the meaning in what they were supposed to learn (cf. Balduf 2009), are unable to make a connection to their personal goals (Glynn et al. 2009) or lack the ability to control their own studies autonomously and on their own terms (Reeve and Jan 2006; Reeve 2009).”
  16. Aug 2020
  17. Nov 2019
  18. Aug 2019
    1. Each note is also given tags for classification. Good tagging helps with accuracy when searching. The method’s recommendation is to use tags for objects, and not for subjects4. In the same note, I write down the ideas I had in mind when highlighting the paragraph, or any connection that comes to mind during this process.
  19. Jul 2019
    1. enabling them to make more substantial connections with both people and texts, and curate durable records of their learning across materials and contexts

      Many thanks to Steel Wagstaff for suggesting this language.

  20. Apr 2019
    1. “Being able to feel safe with other people is probably the single most important aspect of mental health; safe connections are fundamental to meaningful and satisfying lives.”
  21. Jan 2019
    1. Connectivism

      Connectivism takes social constructivism a step further complimenting diverse social connections (nodes) that individuals create within the dynamic nature of the Internet. Technologies become learning tools. Consider Twitter and the connections that we make on this social tool. We are designing our own learning environment. The media, news, individuals we connect to inform us. As they connect with us, we begin to inform them. This becomes an extension or even a new system of learning. The more diverse our connections the broader our experiences will be. The more we participate and engage the more meaningful it will be. As an educator, how can the connections that we make inform our practice in more broad and meaningful ways? How can we help our students create connections that impact and enhance their learning?

  22. Sep 2018
    1. The UbD framework helps focus curriculum and teaching on the develop-ment and deepening of student understanding and transfer of learning (i.e., the ability to effectively use content knowledge and skill)

      When students have a deep understanding they can make connections and when they see that learning can be applied to the real world we have more motivated learners. I feel if students are motivated their ideas and capabilities are boundless. I believe having motivated learners should be a huge part of education, allowing kids to see their potential and how connections can be made.

  23. Jul 2018
    1. “Beyond financial support, Mozilla offered connections in the network — a way to meet other people working on the same kind of initiatives.”

      Interesting to highlight the value of financial support and network connectivity from the youth perspective.

    2. But Mozilla offered us not only sponsorship but also connections in the network to meet other people who are doing the same kind of initiatives, so we could grow our spot in the education technology space. That was crazy. It’s been awesome.
    3. Although that’s very specific to social media — that aspect of connecting with people — it’s something that the open internet fosters. It’s a sense of community. Not just a community — a space for people to network and find common ground or debate or just to interact with each other in some way, even if they’re not in the same country or place.
    1. The second comes from Mark Granovetter, an American sociologist who in 1969 wrote a hugely influential paper called “The Strength of Weak Ties.” In this paper, he suggested that the stronger the tie between any two people, the higher the fraction of friends they have in common.
    2. The first comes from Elizabeth Bott, an influential anthropologist who published a book in 1957 called Family and Social Networks. In this book, she hypothesized that the degree of clustering in an individual’s network could draw the person away from a tie with somebody else. In other words, if you are part of a group of close friends or relations, you are less able to make strong links outside this group.
    3. The team found that the number of friends that pairs of individual have in common is strongly correlated with the strength of the tie between them, as measured in other ways. That’s regardless of whether people are linked by mobile-phone records or by social ties in rural Indian villages.
  24. Feb 2018
    1. *Where’s my bronzing stick?*

      I like how there's this very specific reference to a more stand out panel - found on page 16 of the physical book.

  25. May 2017
    1. (re)articulations

      Barad's use of parentheses reminds me of Gate's article on signifyin(g). While he used parentheses a lot at the end of the word "signifyin(g); he also used them throughout the article around the prefix "re-", denoting "again". I think Barad is suggesting that there are always new ways to articulate something, so it is not necessarily always "re-articulated," but rather is sometimes re-articulated and other times is said in a completely different manner.

    2. That is, it is through specific intra-actions that phenomenacome to matter—in both senses of the word.

      I could be way off base, but this sentence reminds me of the Romantic idea (held by William Godwin, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Mary Shelley, amongst others) that the betterment of the individual was achieved through interactions and forming relationships with others. An improved individual was equipped to understand the world and discover truth--which is I think what Barad is saying here about agential intra-actions and their production of phenomena, which results in both physical and cultural matter.

  26. Apr 2017
    1. it really so easy, forexample, to distinguish between a speaker, an audience, a message, anda context?

      After last week, we can probably agree that "no"--it isn't. Vatz and Bitzer were talking inside the same "box," regarding the speaker, audience, and context as discrete parts, and the post-human is part of the movement which pushes us outside that box, wanting to argue that the parts are not, in fact, discrete.

    1. Fredric Jameson describes his experience and frustration with the Bonaventure Hotel in Los Angeles

      I read through the next few paragraphs and struggled to understand the point they were making with these examples. I wanted more context, which I found helped a great deal in understanding the point being made here, so I thought you folks might appreciate that, as well. Here is the hotel:

      And here is an excerpt from the aforementioned text in which Jameson discusses the hotel. Important points are helpfully in red: https://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~janzb/courses/hum3930b/jameson1.htm

    1. Although thc standard models of rhetorical situation can tell us much about the elements that are involved in a particular situation, these same models can also mask the fluidity of rhetoric.

      It seems like Edbauer is attempting to reverse what Quintillian did many years ago by compartmentalizing rhetoric, which in his mind would be a better way to understand it and practice it. However, rhetoricians have since argued that this has been problematic to the field, with which I think Edbauer would agree. In order to display a truer form of rhetoric, Edbauer wants to create a model that will showcase all of its aspects.

    1. hus, if anything, a rhetoricalbasis of meaning requires a disciplinary hierarchy with rhetoricat the top

      Sounds kind of like Plato in Phaedrus on the Soul when he said that philosophers should have control over Greece to run the society as efficiently and morally as possible.

      Maybe this is a stretch, but the word choice of "hierarchy" makes me uncomfortable because it implies a great amount of self-importance and arrogant superiority.

    2. Therefore, meaning is not discovered in situations, but createdby rhetors.

      I think Nietzsche would agree with this. Nietzsche said that language (and by extension meaning) was subjective and could not be truly universal because individuals (in this example, rhetors) would apply their own background and experiences to a particular word in order to determine its meaning. Also mirrors Locke's idea that language is not universal.

    3. situationis rhetorical only if something can be done, but apparently itis only rhetorical also if something should be done.

      "Should be done" in this context is relative to the individual who is engaging rhetoric in a certain situation. One person might believe something should be done, while another thinks that the status quo is sufficient. This reminds me a little of Hume's theory of taste, in which he argued that certain people had "better" or "superior" taste to others. In reality, taste is subjective and is in the eye of the beholder.

    1. V\Thatsortsofinteractionoccurbetweenspeaker,audience,subject,andoccasion?

      This would be different depending on what type of rhetoric one is examining, according to Gates. He argues that the speaker-audience relationship in white rhetoric is vastly different from the relationship in black rhetoric. In white rhetoric, the audience listens to the speaker; in black rhetoric, the audience listens and is actively involved in the rhetorical discourse through affirmations, comments of support, etc.

    2. Burke'sSpeech totheElectorsofBristol

      I had never heard of this, so I thought there might be others who were curious, too:

      http://www.econlib.org/library/LFBooks/Burke/brkSWv4c1.html

    1. the"music"cannotbemadeclearanddistinctfromotherfactors,suchasitsnearinaudibility,thecompetingsoundsofwindandrain,moodsetterssuchaslight,andsoon.Themusic,inotherwords,mergeswithitssurroundings,

      This is akin to Edbauer's use of "bleeding" or "flux"

    1. nallcases,however,criticsstilltak:eastheirfoundingpresumptionacausalrelationbetweentheconstituentelementscomprisingtheeventasawhole

      Gloss: "but everyone was wrong until me!"

      This whole series of readings has been very sassy and self-important. Well . . . the way I'm reading them, they sound sassy.

    2. Thepresentdiscussionwillnottrytoreviewthisbodyofarguments;ratheritwillattempttotumwhatappearstobeanimpasse(doessituationorspeakeroccupythepositionoforigin?)intoaproductivecontradiction,onethatmakesitpossibleforustorethinkrhetoricinanewway.

      This was almost exactly what Consigny said about his goal. I wonder if they were writing at the same time, since Biesecker is clearly not afraid of calling people out directly for the flaws she sees in their arguments.

    1. Problemsdonotformulatethemselves,andtherhetordoesnotsimplyfindwell-posedproblemsinasituation

      I feel like I'm missing something here. Perhaps problems do not formulate themselves in a vacuum and the problems may not be well-posed, but there is a large degree to which problems occur outside of a rhetor's influence. The President might have the responsibility to determine what problems he should try to address, but that ignores the fact that the question of what to say at the inaugural address is itself a problem that formulated long before any individual President is born. Similarly, the problems he must choose to address likely formed outside of his control, as well.

    2. ThusBitzer'sclaimthat"'situation'isnotastandardterminthevocabularyofrhetoricaltheory"24ismisleading

      Yet the one thing all three of them seem to agree upon is that the very term "situation" is unclear. Bitzer seems right to say that there is no standard meaning, and Consigny seems awfully self-righteous, here, considering his point is essentially "he was right, but in the wrong way!"

    1. my people, the Indians, did not split the artistic from the functional,

      Diverts from all Enlightenment rhetoric of the Anglo tradition, which valued efficiency and straightforwardness over artistic "fluff."

      Gates' idea of different cultural rhetorics can be also applied here.

    2. Language is a male discourse.

      Similar to Woolf's idea that the sentence is a male construct of rhetoric, Anzaldua takes the argument a step further by suggesting that language itself is masculine. It takes us back to the question throughout history of "who can do rhetoric?"; the answer was primarily rich white males for thousands of years, which stifled the development of language. I think this is, in part, why Anzaldua argues that language is inherently male.

    3. weaving images from her multiple selves and from many others into a kind of tapestry or patchwork quilt of language.

      I love the metaphor of language as a quilt. Quilts are unique, just as language is unique to each individual who engages it. It brings together different types of fabric that maybe don't seem like they would go together, but once assembled make a beautiful product.

      The image of layering multiple identities is intriguing to me, and reminds me of a class I took last semester called American Mosaic, which explored literature written by American immigrants or minorities from different backgrounds, which reflected the confusion individuals felt concerning their identities. Anzaldua, I anticipate, tries to layer these multiple facets of her identity together in her literary works, a feat with which many authors struggle.

    4. Through lack of prac-tice and not having others who can speak it, I've lost most of the Paclmco tongue.

      As with signifyin(g), practice and the social interchange with others are crucial.

    5. looking into the mirror.

      More mirror imagery, as in Gates

    6. I write the myths in me,

      As Byron is saying above, this is a really interesting new spin on embodiment and the connections between language and imagination. This feels a lot like Cixous' impassioned speaker.

    7. o be a mouth- the cost is too high- her whole life enslaved to that de-vouring mouth.

      A thematic return to the mouth, with which we began the piece.

    1. signification"

      Etymology of signification: early 14c., "symbolization, representation," from Old French significacion and directly from Latin significationem (nominative significatio) "a signifying, indication, expression, sign, token, meaning, emphasis," noun of action from past participle stem of significare "make known, indicate" (see signify). From late 14c. as "meaning" (of a word, etc.).

      I thought it would be interesting to look at the etymology of "signification" (as it is a main topic of this essay) because Gates has been discussing the diverging meanings of the word in different rhetorics. It is unsurprising that the etymology defined here comes from the "white rhetoric" tradition, as described by Gates. I suppose upon further search and inquiry I could possibly find the meaning of "signification" as defined within African American rhetoric, but it would require a lot of extra effort on my part. This lack of available definition demonstrates the "glossing over" of the African American culture in the United States and the general lack of knowledge and understanding on behalf of the majority of white Americans, and is a reminder of the ignorance that is very much alive in the US.

      This reading has encouraged me to think a lot more on divergent cultural rhetorics and how awareness and acknowledgement of the validity of different rhetorics is crucial to any progress that is to be made in race relations in the US.

    2. Smokey Joe Whitfield
  27. Mar 2017
    1. the stoic Cato's characteri-zation of the rhetorician as a good man skilled at speaking

      The idea that a good rhetorician is a good man (and is not an evil man). An evil man cannot be successful in engaging rhetoric. This has been mentioned before in our readings, specifically Lanham's The Q Question in reference to Quintilian's thoughts on rhetoric.

    2. if that were truly the mode of proceeding, it would re-quire a "neutral observation language" (p. I 25), a language that registers facts without any media-tion by paradigm-specific assumptions. The problem is that "philosophical investigation has not yet provided even a hint of what a language able to do that would be like" (p. 127).

      This sounds a lot like Corder's final line, declaring that the only truly "free speech" would be garbled nonsense devoid of meaning.

    3. The question can only be answered from within one or the other, and the evidence of one party will be regarded by the other either as illusory or as grist for its own mill.

      This sounds a lot like Corder's opposing narratives, particularly the idea that "evidence and reason are only evidence and reason" if the narratives are in sync.

    4. ·'emergencies"

      It seems unclear whether this use of quotation marks is mean to indicate that he is pulling the word directly from Wilkins' work, or if it is just somewhat sarcastic in tone. I suspect the former, but prefer the latter. The idea of language emerging as a result of so-called emergencies sounds a lot like it results from self-made conflicts -- perhaps like the clashing of narratives in Corder's piece.

    1. The whole problem is reduced, as Hume said, to determining who are the quali-fied judges.

      Hume would say the qualified judges are those with good taste, who have experiences that have influenced them to have a refined sense about the world, and therefore are qualified with a better judgment of all things.

    2. symbolic interchange as we know it is impossible, and the condition of being fully human has not been attained.

      To Booth, being fully human means that one can communicate with others through symbols, language, and other interactions. To him, lacking full mental capacity means that one is not fully human (at least I think that is what he is saying). This kind of broaches on the philosophical argument surrounding personhood, and whether one requires what is considered "normal" mental function in order to be considered "human." Animalists would say no, your form as a human is enough; Hylomorphists and Substance Dualists would argue that your mental capacity is necessary to your identity as a human person. I wonder how much, if at all, these schools of thought influenced Booth when he wrote this?

    3. Belief or thought or knowledge, action or will or choice, feeling or emotion or passion occur in every theory of thinking, acting, or feel-ing;

      Booth mentioned "tripartite" earlier and here lists three phrases which three words each.... sounding Platonic.

    4. f a committed doubter says to us that he will not accept the valued fact of man's rhetorical na-ture, we see now that he cannot avoid illustrating it as he tries to atgue against it: we discuss our doubt together, therefore we are. If he chooses to '· deny the value we are placing on the fact that this ~ is how we are made, we cannot, it is true, offer C him any easy disproof, in his sense of the word.

      Hey, Nathaniel, did you . . . did you by chance want to talk about love in the context of this reading? I just got this weird, uncanny sense you wanted us to think about love when I noticed it written in all caps in the margins for the third? fourth? time in this text.

      So to make that connection explicit, this is a good example of the problem Corder was trying to address at the end of his piece, in which an earnest attempt to work out steadfast and competing narratives must come from a place of love, or will otherwise result in dissatisfaction/danger/subjection of one narrative.

      [I know this is brief, so feel free to build on this gloss, guys]

    5. monstrous births,

      I found the use of this phrase very interesting. My inference from previous reading was that a "monstrous birth" was a phrase from a much earlier period in history, used to describe still-births or severely deformed babies that died shortly after birth. From my understanding, they were seen as a punishment from God for some moral failing on the part of the mother. This usage implies that a monstrous birth is someone who has moral failings. I wonder whether this is the true version of the "monstrous birth" for the present age.

      [Side note: I tried finding the etymology, but struggled to do so, perhaps because it is a phrase rather than a single term.]

    6. the Weather-men group

      I had a sort of fuzzy recollection of this group from a history course a few years back, but since they are often glossed over in history books, I thought this might be helpful, especially since this piece is so historically situated in its strange political moment:

      "The Weather Underground Organization (WUO), commonly known as the Weather Underground, was an American militant radical left-wing organization founded on the Ann Arbor campus of the University of Michigan. Originally called Weatherman, the group became known colloquially as the Weathermen. Weatherman organized in 1969 as a faction of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS)[2] composed for the most part of the national office leadership of SDS and their supporters. Their goal was to create a clandestine revolutionary party for the overthrow of the U.S. Government."

      (This is all from the Wiki, if you want to read more:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weather_Underground)

    1. each of us is a narrative. We're always standing some place in our lives, and there is always a tale of how we came to stand there

      This sounds a lot like Cixous' "Who am I? I am 'doing' French history." (Of course, Cixous goes on to emphasize the body a great deal, but this sounds like a more abstract appreciation of individuals as historically situated.

    1. Writing is undeniably a sign function

      I think Foucault would not be comfortable with the use of the word "undeniably." He says that language is a sign, but he also says it isn't because it depends on exactly what one means by "sign" (1448). I wonder how his theory of language would translate to writing?

    1. Two people may say the same thing at the same time, but since there are two people there will be two distinct enunciations.

      Reflects Locke's idea that language is not standard and cannot convey a universal meaning because individuals apply their own backgrounds and experiences to the meanings of words, so their perceptions and understandings of a statement will vary.

      This is the reason, I assume, that Nietzsche would give for why language is a lie.

    2. sexuality and politics;

      He is here discussing the prohibitions around the very topic, but of course there were doubly taboos on who could talk about the taboo subjects, and whose accounts of the matter were considered downright dangerous.

    3. I ~hould have preferred to be enveloped by speech, and carried away well beyond all possible beginnings, rather than have to begin it myself. I should have preferred to be-come aware that a nameless voice was already speaking long before me, so that I should only have needed to join in

      This narrative voice is interesting, considering the way he considers the problems of the author/narrator in the previous pages.

    4. speech act referred to by English analysts?6

      In J.L. Austin 's How to Do Things With Words, a "speech act" is a performative utterance. That is, "speech acts" do something; whereas most of our concern with language thus far was regarding its relative "Truth," Austin was interested in language that was not meant to assert, but to do. (For example, "hello!" is not meant to persuade, but to greet. It does something rather than conveying information.)

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._L._Austin#Performative_utterance

    5. the payment that he re-ceives from the community or from individuals;

      This is only one of many factors, but the materiality is--I think--crucial, and recalls Woolf's five hundred pounds a year.

    6. discourse i1, a form of social action

      This seems to link us back to the problem of embodiment, and those rhetors for whom the very fact of public speaking was an urgent political problem and social action. (Douglass, Palmer, Stewart, Grimke(s), etc.)

    1. And yes," says Molly, carrying Ulysses off be-yond any book and toward the new writing; "I said yes, I will Yes."

      I was curious about this line, so I did a little searching and I found this particularly interesting, since Cixous did her dissertation on Joyce:

      The episode both begins and ends with "yes," a word that Joyce described as "the female word" and that he said indicated "acquiescence, self-abandon, relaxation, the end of all resistance."

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molly_Bloom#Soliloquy

    1. l\lere suddenly twofold in-Austen and Emily Bronte :ing than in their power to d solicitations and to hold rbed by scorn or censure. serene or a very powerful emptation to anger. The he assurance of inferiority which were lavished upon an art, provoked such reac-h. One sees the effect in ignation, in George Eliot's 1 again one finds it in the women writers-in their in their unnatural self-as-natural docility. Moreover, most unconsciously. They ence to authority. The vi-;;culine or it becomes too Jerf'ect integrity and, with quality as a work of art. tat has crept into women's :em, a change of attitude. 10 longer bitter. She is no no longer pleading and :s. We are approaching, if :d, the time when her writ-10 foreign influence to dis-le to concentrate upon her ~tion from outside. The :e within the reach of ge-only now coming within 1en. Therefore the average far more genuine and far than it was a hundred or that before a woman can wishes to write, she has :e. To begin with, there is ·-so simple, apparently; -that the very form of the r. It is a sentence made by heavy, too pompous for a 1 novel, which covers so 1d, an ordinary and usual to be found to carry the aturally from one end of And this a woman must make for herself, altering and adapting the cur-rent sentence until she writes one that takes the natural shape of her thought without crushing or distorting it.

      You can apply Burke's idea of breaking something down to its absolute basic level in order to fully understand it; once you understand it, only then you can recreate it to make it your own.

    2. This brings into women's writing an element which is entirely absent from a man's, unless, indeed, he happens to be a work-ing-man, a Negro, or one who for some other rea-son is conscious of disability.

      Is she acknowledging the intersectionality of feminism?

    1. there is a distinction between the "contemplative" goal of literature and the "active" goal of rhetoric, literature frequently uses persuasion and argumentation.

      Many authors use literature as a way to express their views on society, politics, economics, etc. Some prominent authors that come to mind are William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, both of whom wrote extensively on the struggles of women and criticized the societal structure in which they lived, but expressed these views through characters and stories.

    2. Traditional language philosophy treats language as an imperfect expression of logic.

      Interesting to note that in Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther, the protagonist Werther mentions multiple times that words/language could not accurately describe his feelings or the world around him; this takes the stance that not only does language not accurately convey logic, but also lacks the ability to explain one's emotions. It's similar to Locke's (and other Enlightenment thinkers') idea that language cannot allow us to express what we want to express because it does not accurately capture anything in the world around us, whether that be objects, emotions, other people, etc.

    3. But whereas litera-ture was the chief opponent of rhetoric in America, linguistics and semantics opT posed rhetoric in European intellectual life at the beginning of the century.

      References the Rickert piece, which stated that the rhetorical/cultural environment influenced the rhetoric that was produced. Similarly, the rhetorical culture of America and Europe differed, and the primary opponent of rhetoric changed as a result of the different rhetoric produced (due to different rhetorical environments). This web of rhetoric is kind of confusing, but also makes sense because rhetoric is everywhere.

    4. Burke sees rhetoric as the loser in a connict with literature

      In the general university system, I would tend to agree with Burke. Whenever I tell anyone I am an English major, they immediately assume that I study literature (which I do sometimes, but also not all the time) and ask what I want to teach, and can't possibly imagine that there are other careers available for English majors. When I mention that my concentration is Rhetoric, people are confused as to what that even is. This kind of references the readings from the first week when we tried to define rhetoric, but never actually established a definitive definition; in the same way, I struggle with communicating exactly what I learn with my friends who have no contextual background or understanding for what I study.

    5. he purpose of rhetoric, in other words, is lo convey knowledge clearly and efficiently.

      Reflects Astell's (and other Enlightenment thinkers) view that writing should be clear, concise, and without superfluity.

  28. Feb 2017
    1. E. M. Forste

      Author of "Maurice" a homosexual novel that was never intended to be published.

    2. And the novels, without meaning to, inevitably lie.

      Ah, the lies again!

    3. That Miss Richardson gets so far as to achieve a sense of reality far greater than that produced by the ordinary means is un-doubted. But, then, which reality is it, the superfi-cial or the profound?

      The benefits of experimentation in consciousness writing, which Woolf goes on to utilize in her own fiction.

    4. The Angel in the House.

      (Please forgive all the bullet points, but hypothes.is was not cooperating with my formatting. The options were either this, or to have the poem become one long paragraph)

      • Excerpt:
      • Man must be pleased; but him to please
      • Is woman's pleasure; down the gulf
      • Of his condoled necessities
      • She casts her best, she flings herself.
      • How often flings for nought, and yokes
      • Her heart to an icicle or whim,
      • Whose each impatient word provokes
      • Another, not from her, but him;
      • While she, too gentle even to force
      • His penitence by kind replies,
      • Waits by, expecting his remorse,
      • With pardon in her pitying eyes;
      • And if he once, by shame oppress'd,
      • A comfortable word confers,
      • She leans and weeps against his breast,
      • And seems to think the sin was hers;
      • Or any eye to see her charms,
      • At any time, she's still his wife,
      • Dearly devoted to his arms;
      • She loves with love that cannot tire;
      • And when, ah woe, she loves alone,
      • Through passionate duty love springs higher,
      • As grass grows taller round a stone.
    5. It is true I am a woman; it is true I am employed; but what professional experiences have I had? I

      This reminds me of Iris Young's "Five Faces of Oppression." Young argues that we often neglect to see the many faces of oppression, and that we misrepresent reality by comparing dissimilar experiences of oppression as existing under the same general umbrella of subjectivity. Anyone who experiences even one face of oppression is oppressed, but many individuals and groups experience oppression differently because they may experience different combinations of the faces of oppression. One face of oppression which often goes overlooked is "powerlessness."

      Powerlessness is a distinction between technical freedom and actual self-possession and choice. Examples Young gives are that although we are technically allowed to choose our employer, many employees are placed at the bottom of the totem pole, where they are dictated to, rather than consulted about their own work. Those who work menial jobs, for example, in which the minutia of their jobs (what to do and how to do it) are strictly controlled are powerless. In contrast, professionals such as doctors, teachers, managers, etc. are given a degree of freedom and choice about how to best go about their work, and they might even have employees working under them, whose work they get to control. This freedom gives one "respectability" in the eyes of society and one's own eyes. If someone does not have access to professionalization, they are denigrated for this lack of "respectability," by the implication that they are inferior to professionals. This, of course, becomes a vicious economic and psychological cycle.

      This system of oppression through powerlessness is what Woolf is referencing here. Although she is employed, society has denied her the freedom allotted to most literary professionals, most of whom are men. She is employed, but she is not a professional because she is denied the freedom and respectability that being a professional connotes.

    1. instructional staff

      I think Nathaniel is right to point out a gender problem, as he has in his marginal comment, here. However, I think we also see a class problem arising more starkly. Whereas before there was a certain "professionalization" automatically associated with teaching at the college level, the "respectability" teaching once granted has disappeared. Although he does not explicitly invoke the word "class," Weaver clearly feels that those who make up the "instructional staff" are low in stature and respectability. To be a little crass, this sounds an awful lot like Weaver is complaining about "the neighborhood going down hill," so to speak. Although the "instructional staff" presumably have some sort of authority and experience to earn this teaching role, Weaver sees their arrival as signaling the decline of rhetoric as he once knew it, rather than seeing it as a sign that rhetoric is becoming more accessible and that more groups of people are actively engaging in rhetoric.

    2. Because rhetoric tries to orient the audience toward a worldview, it is imperative for the study of rhetoric to identify and evaluate the controlling ideas (or "god-terms") on which the ethics of any discourse is based.

      Ah ha! So I guess this answers my question about the Burke reading. I had a hard time following the Burke, but Weaver's connection to Plato is obviously much clearer. (And Weaver in general is also much clearer.)

    1. inventing not only the matter of their texts, but appropriate personae to deliver thcm.

      Although this particular quote is about women rhetors, this ties us back to our discussion of Douglass' choice of carefully-tailored personae during his lecture circuits.

    1. I mean the doctrine of Usage. The doc-0 trine that there is a right or a good use for every -\+,....+ word and that literary virtue consists in making rtut...;..l. that good use of it

      It feels like we are finally getting to his most important point. This also seems related to Nietzsche, to an extent, in that to claim a "right" or "good" usage implies that we can improve on language by narrowing it, but this sort of view of language ignores that it's all just a system of metaphor.

    2. We should develop our theory of signs from observations of other people, and only admit evidence drawn from in-trospection when we know how to appraise it.

      But we are inherently trapped within our own perceptions of other people's perceptions. He is trying to call out the problem of introspection, but seems to overlook that the influence of introspection can not be completely avoided.

      This is the problem noted in the introduction, when Richards would remove the author and title from a poem and then critique the test subjects' responses as being "wrong" for various reasons, when he was drawing on his own outside knowledge of the poem and literature generally to establish how and why they were "wrong." He cannot get outside himself, but he seems to forget that, from time to time.

    3. for bona fide communications,

      It feels like this is a distinction between Nietzsche's social lies and anti-social lies. If I'm glossing this correctly, bona fide communications are those social lies which we have all agreed upon to enable communication. "Misdirection" is the anti-social lie for the purpose of trickery.

    1. efficient communication by language.

      Like Spencer and Bain, Hill is very focused on the efficiency of language.

    2. They corre-spond to the three departments of the human mind, the Understanding, the Will, and the Feel-ings.

      Reflects platonic division into three parts; also seems to be somewhat Augustinian in nature. Augustinian divided the soul into three parts: Memory, Understanding, and Willing.

      The Understanding, the Will, and the Feelings seem to be Bain's update on Logos, Ethos, and Pathos.

      Lots of connections in this passage!

    3. To obtain suitable exercises for practice in writing English, is a prime consideration with the teacher.

      Wouldn't this inverted sentence structure go against Spencer's principle of economy? The comma in between clauses really threw me off, personally.

    1. Spencer is not at all opposed to artful writing, to rhetorical nourish, or to poetry.

      Contrasts general enlightenment thought, but especially Astell:

      "But we shou'd fold up our Thoughts so closely and neatly, expressing them in such significant tho few words, as that the Readers Mind may easily open and enlarge them. And if this can be done with facility we are Perspicuous as well as Strong, if with difficulty or not at all, we're then perplext and Obscure Writers" (852).

    2. the prin-ciples of reasoning neither makes, nor is essential to, a good reasoner, is doubtless true. Thus, 100, is it wilh grammar.

      This attitude is in contrast to the weak defense idea that a good reasoner was a good person. Here Spencer is rejecting that idea, and also rejecting the idea that good grammar is indicative of a good character.

    3. he principle of economy.

      Lifted by Bain and Hill.

    1. If a pastor is present ask him to offer prayer

      An opportunity for a man to participate, but also ropes him in to offering an implicit endorsement of the group/meeting by blessing it. Willard is recommending another sort of testimonial.

    2. it may be reasonably claimed that men's hopes of hea~en will be im-measurnbly increased

      This reminds me of Douglass' argument that slavery was dangerous to whites as well as blacks because it corrupted even the most tender-hearted mistress. These sorts of appeals remind us that these rhetors are always thinking about the make up of their audience.

    3. one hundred and twenty in the Pentecostal chamber, and in that number women were clearly and indisputably included.

      I'm confused about what this is referencing. Is this the same passage Palmer refers to when she argues that the Bible indicates men and women were present when the apostles gained the ability to speak in different tongues?

    4. with an introduction comprising three letters from male

      Another example of white male testimony being necessary for Othered bodies to be taken seriously, connecting us to Palmer, Stewart, the Grimkes, and Douglass last week.

    1. Beacon Hill

      an extremely white community to this day, the 2010 census says about a 2% percent of the population is African american

    2. And such is the powerful force of prejudice.

      Reflects Hume's point that: "It is well known, that in all questions, submitted to the understanding, prejudice is destructive of sound judgment, and perverts all operations of the intellectual faculties..." (836).

    3. including William Lloyd Garrison, who could testify to her good works from her activist days in Boston to the present.

      Historically, this sort of testimony was fairly common as a preface to the writing of women and people of color. Such testimonies from (white, wealthy, well-connected) men would sometimes appear prior to the text itself to convince the reader that the author was worth taking seriously, since women and people of color were not considered worth of consideration on their own merits.

    4. did not yet enjoy this supportive reaction

      This seems like quite an understatement, given the last sentence of the next paragraph. Do we have any historical info regarding the ways the hostility of the audience manifested itself? I imagine it must have been fairly extreme to force her to leave the city. For example, was it heckling, attempts to speak over her, jeers and boos to drown out her words, perhaps even a dramatic attempt to pull her from the stage? It seems like the reactions of such hostile audiences offer important historical information, as it should be kept in mind when we consider how women and people of color first needed to shape a type of rhetoric that would quell a hostile audience.

      As an example from a different historical moment, there are conflicting reports of Sojourner Truth's reception at the Seneca Falls Convention. Some reports imply that she was heckled, or at least that there were interjections from the audience, while other reports offer an opposing narrative that present Truth as largely supported by the audience and not decried at all. The hostility or receptivity of the audience (and the way such information is mentioned in accounts) shapes the way we can interpret Truth's oration and its effects.

    1. but this edu-cation did not include classical learning, literacy in Greek and Latin, or formal training in rhetoric, except in a few elite schools for boys destined for the univer-sity

      I do wonder what the reasoning was for this (I mean, besides the blatant "women and the lower class are too stupid to understand our Great Books and/or will lead lives that do not require a 'polite' education"). We've already read arguments that the "polite" education supposedly improved the virtues as well as the mind, right? Wouldn't all of society benefit if women and the lower class were virtuous, as much as possible?

    1. "Such is the literal translation of the \fo10v,I ! passage," and leaves it with the reader to make sort c,f the application, with the exclamation, "The reader \i\LC. 1~e,t\{ may make of it what he pleascs."

      In the Douglass piece someone made a comment about the ethos of the author. Here, the author seems to be asserting the truth, based on his knowledge as a translator, but then throwing in the towel when it comes to interpretation.

    2. the lime has now come when ignorance will involve guilt;

      Nathaniel has drawn our attention to the phrase "ignorance will involve guilt," which I think is significant, but I also want to reflect on the idea that chiding for the wrongs of the past is not necessary because it was born of ignorance and that it is only the time (that is, the moment in which she was writing) which moves us from forgiveness to guilt in the audience. This seems like a similar move to Douglass when he posited that his mistress had been a good, tender-hearted person before she was poisoned by slavery. He called out slavery as a threat to white slave owners, just as Palmer here decries oppression of women will soon lead to a corruption of the souls of men who go on participating in it, once they have been stripped of their ignorance.

    1. lf physical weakness is alluded to, I cheerfully concede the superiority; if brute force is what my brethren arc claiming, I am willing to let them have all the honor they desire; but if they mean to intimate, that mental or moral weakness belongs to woman, more than to man, I utterly disclaim the charge.

      Here is that "mental and moral" argument referred to in The Rhetorical Tradition introduction to this section.

    2. Women must be free to act as responsible moral agents

      This is an important claim that was a prominent argument in the Seneca Falls convention, notably as an argument of Sojourner Truth's "Ain't I a Woman?"

    3. male hecklers who threatened violence,

      This is a partial answer to my concern about Stewart's speaking experiences. I wonder whether heckling (and its consequences) was better recorded against the Grimke sisters because they were white women (and therefore viewed as more fragile and worthy of protection).

    4. which wa.'i burned to the ground by an angry mob shortly after she spoke.

      A second example of a well-documented consequence of women speaking to a mixed crowd. (Though, to be fair, it would be sort of difficult to overlook this one/fail to record it. It's pretty dramatic.)

  29. Feb 2016
    1. the personal, social, and emotional transformations that adolescents and adults who are at risk experience as they develop resilience and shift from disengagement to engagement, and/or academic failure to success in schools.

      I think it's important to be able to identify the changes in attitude, relationships and moods that we can see when at-risk teenagers begin to be self-directed learners. If we could see what these changes look like and agree on them, then we might be able to assess students better. Currently none of the ways we move or prevent students from moving through school make sense to me: social promotion (advancement because of age), testing (usually of a small subset of math and reading skills), or even portfolio assessment (because at-risk students usually don't have a body of "mastery" level work).

  30. Nov 2015
    1. ‘‘youth space, a place to gather and see and be seen bypeers.’’ Socializing is the driving force of these virtual worlds

      I agree with the above connections to Nespor - but I think that there is also a great connection here to Figured Worlds. This line can be read as the definition of the figured world of Whyville.

    2. Designing, selling, and buying face parts are not simply leisure activ-ities; they are core activities driven by Whyvillians’ interest in their online represen-tation of who they are and who they possibly could become

      Does anyone else find it strange that students are playing a game where the ultimate goal is to buy/sell virtual identities?

    3. 68%of the visitors are girls

      This is interesting. This is proportionally heavy on the girls, what could be the possible reasons for this? Could the science curriculum component make it feel like less of a game and more like school? This makes me think of Allen's article about the exploratorium and trying to make content driven tasks not feel artificial in the produced space.

    4. their new playplaces.

      When Nespor discusses public spaces, he describes them as a space produced through repeated actions- in this case the 'play places' are socially structured through online interactions.

    5. Face Parts in Akbar’s

      Something that is both bothering me about Whyville and interesting to me in terms of our other readings is the focus of the game on creating or changing the "faceparts" of the avatar. It bothers me for reasons Raquel mentioned earlier about "preparing them" (or i might say "figuring them into" a world that values beauty and perfection above a lot else. But it is also a really interesting take on Ma and Munter's idea of editing space. Maybe this is a stretch, but I am subbing out "spaces" in the sense of where we interact or "are" with the avatar - thus the player - who gets edited but also does the editing. Maybe it's too weird and doesn't work, but it seems like the player would be impacted and impacting their experience of the world at the same time.

    6. Yet, there is no denying thatbeing on Whyville was for us like being in a different world, whereas our afterschoolclub participants seamlessly joined the virtual community.

      Why is there a feeling of different access to participation? In what ways did they not have the ecology of action or the resources to participate (Heath, et al. 2002)? Because, unlike the case with Nasir and Cooks, there is not specific arbiter giviing the students more resources for participation in the community of practice.

    1. He went on to suggest that new members have the optionof selecting different colored newbie faces when they initially register withWhyville, saying, ‘‘I just think it would be a good idea, so newbies who do not makemuch clams could get their own real skin color.’’

      Makes me think of LPP because the resources for newcomer participation may prohibit people from wanting to become a participant. This could turn off a lot perspective users.

    2. His opponent under-stood his screen name always_black as a marker of race, and after insulting him inchat mode with slurs, asked him to ‘‘bow, nigger, bow,’’ suggesting a racial stereo-type of subservient blacks. While the British writer and game journalist who sharedthese experiences in his essay chose the name always_black for reasons not relatedto his race, his experience demonstrates how people read a variety of informationpresented in online avatars as racial markers and act accordingly.

      This made me think of the discussions we had around figured worlds vs. communities of practice. One of the biggest differences that we identified is the component of identity in each- in figured worlds, identity can be ascribed to you, whereas in a community of practice, you are taking part in that identity. Here the British writer was ascribed to an identity in the virtual world.

    1. Ecological validity is about having a basis to credibly claim that our researchaccounts are about how and what people do, learn, and think in daily life, and not simplyabout what they do within the context of contrived laboratory tasks

      Makes me think of all the articles on apprenticeship that we read about; what does learning entail? Is it the transfer of problem solving to real world contexts and careers, or are we using the basis of school curriculum? Here the author articulates that they will cover many types of learning and not just a translation to curricular learning.

    2. “horizon of observation”15andcould act as a peripheral participant to Johnny and Mikey’s pla

      This phrase definitely has me thinking about intent participation and also has me thinking back to Ma & Munter with the same connection. Like Maddy, skaters often sat in this "on deck" position waiting for the right opportunity to participate.

    3. An alternative approach to studying transfer is rooted in an ethnographic tradition thatis sometimes called situated, everyday, or distributed cognition.1

      As seen in FoK (Moll Tapia and Witmore 1993) and FW research read earlier in semester. But are these "psychology" research?

    4. Unlike in the prior two vignettes, it is difficult to say here who is the more“expert” player. On the whole, we interpret the learning described here as a collaborativeprocess between two players of relatively equal status

      Here we can see that roles shift depending on the situation. The sharing of the controllers shows that they see each other as equals, but also that each has strengths which they can share with the other. This again reminds me intent participation, where there are "fluid negotiations of responsibilities" (185)

    1. Learners need to figure out how to adapt their abilities, interests, and identities across a diverse set of locations on a routine basis as they attempt to accomplish their goals or respond to the interests of other social ac-tors. When they are successful, this allows learners, sometimes in collaboration with other social actors in the setting, to create connected and thereby extended learning pathways that learners can benefit from

      This is similar to the multisited article in that it acknowledges that learning happens both within multiple setting and across them (and time). It also has me wondering something new that I didn't think of when I read the other paper and that is, how much of this "figuring out" is necessarily conscious? In what ways are we (in every setting) applying/adapting/repurposing knowledge from other settings (CoPs/islands of expertise) in order to be successful in the new setting (and thus to create new knowledge)?

    2. Places are also unique in that group, organi-zational, and institutional activities often shape very specific social expectations for participation and learning. In this way, the institutional constraints of places

      This makes me think of our #posing reading and our reading on museum visitors. These places are shaped for specific visitor experiences- though the interpretations vary.

    3. L e a r n i ng pat hway s a l so re su lt f rom persona l or sha red concerns , challenges or desires (e.g., in relation to a pressing circumstance, threat, or opportu-nity). Such concerns are broad and varied, from working to improve the academic achievement of youth in specific subjects, to protecting one’s community from envi-

      Becker would love agree. Viewing students as a living vessel with feelings, emotions, passions and interests and not removed from the planning and evaluating of academia is crucial to understanding why schools are not appropriately encouraging spaces for learning.

    4. ntentions,’ which drive individuals to either change their intentions or alter their life pathways. In order to account for these diversities of social practices, we articulate a theoretical framework focused on understanding the variegated cultural learning pathways that are unfolding, or that persons are trying to unfold, at any given his-torical moment across the sociodemographic diversity of the community involved.

      This reminded me of "lines of practice," how peoples practices fluctuate with learning, motivation, interest.

    1. Reminds me of social work's Systems Theory, which analyzes the various components of an individual's life and how they work together in a system in order to maintain homeostasis. Similarly, systems of infrastructure must work together for society to operate effectively.

  31. doc-0g-ag-prod-03-apps-viewer.googleusercontent.com doc-0g-ag-prod-03-apps-viewer.googleusercontent.com
    1. our work is organized around the prin-ciples that people are part of multiple activity systems, and that learning should be studied accordingly.

      This has me thinking about activity systems in a new way - as related to CoP (chosen over FW because of the agency factor in both). They are not the same cause an activity system produces some kind of object, but they do hint at a connection in that overlapping CoP and overlapping activity systems both produce new versions of each respectively.

    2. From this perspective, the work novices do to enter a practice, and the work all learners do to gain new understandings, tools, and exper-tise, is also the work of reinventing that practice

      This made me think of the skatepark discussion as well. It seems that the concept that they are discussing, the idea that "work novices do to enter a practice" is "also the work of reinventing that practice" can be tied to the idea of "editing" spaces that we saw in the skateparks reading.

    3. By understanding the individual and his or her cultural means in rela-tion to his or her contexts of development, this approach understands learning as a distributed phenomenon and, thereby, contests the tenden-cy to create the Cartesian divide between the individual and the social

      This notion certainly maps well to the example of the extended families that we see when we discussed Funds of Knowledge. The emphasis here on physical places could help us broaden our view of funds of knowledge, perhaps thinking that different physical spaces could themselves offer access to different funds of knowledge.

  32. Oct 2015
    1. Asking students to offer suggestions for ways to measure that circumference, she discouraged them from appealing to familiar tools like tape measuresbut rather suggested that “let’s just use our body tools.”

      Connection to Resnick - symbol manipulation vs. contextualized reasoning!

    2. As the students move, so too does the classroom’sarchitecture, minutely. With each nudge of a chair or curve-huggingtransit around a desk, the room’s furniture seemsless a place to do mathematics and more an impediment to it(Figure6.3).

      As the students move they edit the space to accomodate the activity. This reminds me of Ma & Hunter, setting and activity interacting with each other and new learning emerges.

    3. The students are editting their space to accomodate the activity. This is similar to Ma and Hunter, setting and activity inform each other and new learning emerges.

    1. First, we see the pair mak-ing use of the digital text as a joint resource, noting that Munch’s expression is one of “surprise.”

      Immediate apprehendability FTW!

    2. Thus in looking at the data below, the ways in which avisitor describes a work or an image reflect not only what they are seeing but also how they areseeing and interpreting it.

      Would this not be the first step an observing would need to do BEFORE posing? This is why I said earlier internalizing and externalizing may be interconnected.

    3. aform of participation with these places.

      This reminds me of Ma & Munter's argument about interaction in and with physical spaces as part of co-construction of the space as a certain kind of setting.

    1. "Some of them we'll reach-! don't care if they're going to be professional dancers or not. That's not the point. The point is that they're working close with a teacher, and that's going to reflect for all their lives.

      Establishing a mentorship. This makes me think of lpp, but I also think this is promoting a social well-being through the mentorship, not just expertise in the dance field.

  33. doc-08-bk-prod-01-apps-viewer.googleusercontent.com doc-08-bk-prod-01-apps-viewer.googleusercontent.com
    1. ngoing activity, in concert,plays a role in its constitution

      LPP- Everyone's participation is necessary in the construction of the story telling.

    2. We use the term “edited,” borrowing from Lave and her colleagues, to empha-size the reassembly of relevant aspects of the arena for the shopper for his or her purposes

      I think this looks at the difference between a veteran of a setting in comparison to a newcomer.

    3. They both oriented to their time together as a learning event for Laura: Laura asked ques-tions, watched Austin, and practiced while Austin watched Laura, demonstrated, offered advice,and cheered her on

      How about for Austin? Is this a learning event for him as well? As a more experienced skater, is it understood in the community that part of his "practice" now includes being a resource for novices or no? If it is, is the park also giving him an opportunity to engage in that role?

    4. His microanalysis tracked how thestudents and teachers positioned themselves and each other, discursively and bodily, to jointlyachieve the silencing.

      This makes me think of the hierarchy in education. Also about guided participation as opposed to intent participation

    1. . Second, spatial literacy is an important component of civic engagementsince many democratic processes of urban development rely on representations of spaceand residents’ sustained reflection on experiences within lived spaces. Third, and criticalfor more inclusive civic participation, youth are typically not viewed as participatory‘‘stakeholders’’ in processes of urban development

      This screams Nespor's issues with field trips to certain "container" locations.

    2. Carissa’s image of herself as a young adult ‘‘took place’’ in the city by marking up thedesire layer of her map with a bike lane that allowed a future-time, college student (herself asa young adult) to ride a bike from her university campus, past her current neighborhood, andinto an area of the city that was the center of music publishing and recording.

      Carissa's identity was transforming from seeing herself as a teen to a college student and anticipating her needs as a young adult.

    1. Looking through this lens, it’s not just about the learning experience the leader creates for the learner, it’s about the learning that takes place because the learner is actively participating in the experience

      This also reminds me of Ma & Hunter's paper on skate parks, how learner and teachers emerge from the setting and activity.

    1. UnlikethehammersthatNasirandCookmentionintheirarticle,thevarioushammershapessuggesttheirusage.Inthelibrary,therewereavarietyofsimilarlookingcomputersthatservedveryspecificfunctions

      This is a nice distinction between what Nasir and Cooks saw and what you see in terms of the "Immediate apprehendability" (Allen's term) of the resources. This might be a nice lens to add if you find it sheds more light on how the resources get (or don't get) taken up by visitors.

    1. the focus of joint parent-child attention and thus they serve the function of providing children an online structure for parsing, storing, and making in-ferences about evidence as it is encountered.

      Is this not heavily influenced by the type of attachment the child has with their caretaker? I would think that An ambivalent or disorganized attachment would not lead to this type of functioning with parent-child.

    2. The facilitative effect of explanation,(also holds for children, although they are less likely than adults to spontaneously generate explanations in the course of exploration, categorization, or problem solving.

      Is this because of children's cognitive development not being fully developed? Who is to say that children who have been exposed to a particular problem more frequently than others and have become an expert at that situation are not able to generate a spontaneous explanation to a similar problem? Also what is defining spontaneous?

    3. ISlANDS OF EXPERTISE

      I couldn't really find a place in the text to throw this up so I just used the header :)

      What is the connection between islands of expertise and "lines of practice" (Azevedo)?

      Azevdo argues that, "A line of practice is a distinctive, recurrent pattern of "long-term" engagement in a person's practice participation" and continues on to add that it is mediated by preferences and conditions of practice. So then are "lines of practice" the process by which an interest develops into an "island of expertise"?

      (Recall that, "preferences refer to the deep, long-term goals, values, and beliefs that a person develops in the practice, whereas conditions of practice refer to the constraints and affordances impinging on the person's practice")

    4. Similarly, when adults provide causal explanations as chil-dren construct family-resemblance categories from novel instances, chil-dren are more accurate in categorizing subsequent instances (Krascum & Andrews, 1998). If adults do not provide such explanations or at least ex-plicitly prompt the child to generate their own explanations, it is unlikely that children will decide to do so on their own

      Is this similar to the example of guided participation in YELL (the first group in the reading)? The adults there for support, following young person's lead and giving them the support they need when they need it?

    5. Their shared knowledge and experience allow their talk to move to deeper levels than is typically possible in a domain where the boy is a rela-tive novice.

      May be a stretch, but there are some parallels here to AA. The strong emphasis on sharing -- even by novices -- are used to teach the "beliefs, propositions, and interpretations" common to the group, which then allows them to dive into a deeper discussion about alcoholism

    6. the parents mig~t.\decide the boy would enjoy visiting a nearby train mu-. O,; 1 seum

      Don't know if this is too farfetched, but could this be an example of guided participation? The parents have now developed a sort of 'lesson plan' where they can implement curricula of the boys' interest and he is 'engaging in practice'.

    7. Even when a child ~~,.).Q..-( t:,V loses interest and an island of ex,Pertise begins to fade, the abstract and gen-(\...! 'f-A. <g \ era! themes that used the islands rich knowledge as a launching pa~ll re-4-iA ~~ . -\ , (_ IC main connected to children's otfler knowledge.

      Connects to FoK because Moll et al describes thinking as a distribution of knowledge through social interactions. However, this takes FoK a step further by saying that though the content knowledge may be limited for a certain time depending on interests invested, the implicit learning that occurred will be carried over to another 'island'.

    1. Stats—published statistics on major league teams present and past—played a major role in characterizations of the game and of self for several team m

      I think there is a similarity here in terms of motivation and identity with what we saw with the hurdlers. While there are a lot of goals (like fun) and things motivating the participation of the students, objective measures like "stats" always seem to play "a major role in characterization of the game and of self".

      While recognizing other goals, Nasir & Cook write that "an important goal of track [...] was reducing the time it takes one to complete an event, as times were the standard measure of performance in most events."(p. 46). They then discuss many other more localized goals (academic success, social relationships, etc.) But the time seems to govern the rest.

      In that example and here, it seems difficult to abandon the connection that these objective measures have on motivation and identity, even when such a strong emphasis is placed on other goals.

    2. ithin the Little League team already described, sociodramatic play—within the ongoing play of the drama of the full season—allows the players to achieve mastery, to contrast, illustrate, and explore options. It as

      These figured worlds are certainly part of everyone's upbringing -- every soccer fan has performed this "play" of kicking the winning world cup goal, every golfer has sunk the last putt to win the Masters, and every football player that game-winning touchdown.

      But what I really like about the explanation here is that in the baseball it is easy to see how inhabiting these figured worlds essentially becomes a problem-solving strategy. Actually, it is kind hard to think how the coach would accomplish some of this training without it. Similar to the AA example, it is hard to see how it could, with the creation of the figured worlds through the stories of participants and the roles of each, how they'd go about accomplishing their goals.

    3. "spectate knowingly

      "spectate knowingly" <-->intent participation?

    4. requests of the players were usually couched in terms of "How would they do this in the major leagues?" (personal communication, December 27, 1988). Fo

      This type of command asks the students at least to assume the identity of a professional player, and then give their "best guess" as to what they feel the proper behavior would be.

      This seems different from the kind of identity formation that we saw with LPP. Through that lens, identity shifts by moving from peripheral participation and slowly working one's way into the center; here, it seems almost the opposite: The coach tries to get them to "pretend" to be real players as much as possible, and from that assumed identity, slowly uncover attitudes and behaviors that will legitimize it

    1. area immediately surrounding the elevators

      This is a great idea. I know I went right past this area and into the larger space, trying to gain an awareness of what was there and what people were doing and missed this section until much later on when I was headed out. This speaks to immediate apprehendability (IA in the rest of my comments) of spaces versus things or resources and also hints that maybe part of IA is what the visitor expects/is focused on.

    1. Breaks in the people’s observational routines may also have followed froma number of observation-related occurrences. A common interruption regardedan unusually good sighting of any given

      Reminds me of Nasir and the importance placed on relational resources. These relationships with others at the star parties helps to strengthen the sense of belonging. There is continued learning as they converse and point out new things to one another, which "increases connection to the practice," as Nasir would say.

    2. As newcomers are assisted by more capable peers inworking with various aspects of garment making, they take on new responsibil-ities in the production process and develop into more mature forms of practiceparticipation.

      Azevedo does a nice job of summarizing how access to resources plays a role in accountability in LPP

    3. Still, she wanted to make sure that she had spotted the right formation,and thus she began consulting several books in search of a picture of M103 thatcould confirm or reject her inferences

      Access to these books is part of what establishes her identity as an astronomer and not just a stargazer -- without these, she is just a star gazer. Certainly reminds me of the individual pieces of track equipment which reinforced the hurdler's identities in Nasir & Cook

    1. Now,instead of routinely helping adults, children are often involved in specialized child-focused exercises to assemble skills for later entry in mature activities from whichthey are often excluded in childhood. These specialized child-focused situations—especially schooling, but also pre-school lessons and child-focused conversation infamilies—often employ instructional practices and a concept of learning that wereheavily influenced by the organization of factories, forming a cultural traditionthat contrasts with intent participation.

      This reminds me of Lave and Wenger's chapter 3 where they discuss the importance of apprenticeship. Rogoff instead suggests the importance of intent participation may not necessarily build the craftsmanship that an apprenticeship may, but that students can learn the social skills, and interactions that will happen in the work environment through these participations. This idea of assembling skills for late entry doesn't seem to work since students aren't being immersed in the scenario since they are only surround by adults. This is why "school is a lousy place to learn", sometimes.

    2. Inuk Mother: You’ll be able to know by watching

      This example just reminded me of that card game always played at summer camp, "Mao" or "Chairman Mao" .... where the main rule of the game is that you can't explain the rules, you just have to learn by observation

    3. We argue that an emphasis on learning through intent participation—thoughlikely present in some settings in all communities—fits especially with the practicesof cultural communities that routinely include children in the mature activitiesthat are part of the community’s daily life.

      Connection to learning through everyday activities. Also shows importance for intergenerational communities, work, and daily life - a main tenet in social justice movements

    4. In the intent participation tradition, experienced people play a guiding role, facil-itating learners’ involvement and often participating alongside learners—indeed,often learning themselves. New learners in turn take initiative in learning andcontributing to shared endeavors, sometimes offering leadership in the process.In contrast, in assembly-line instruction, experienced people manage learners’behavior and communication. They subdivide the task, often directing but notactually participating in the activity at hand. They serve as experts, and the learners,in turn, are supposed to cooperate in receiving instruction and information andcarrying out assignments.

      Here's another great example of intent participation versus school learning.

      I wonder how we might move from transmission to facilitation? I think that the classroom described in the Moll, et. al. that we read last week is actually a great example, but it would take a lot of effort to break out of the assembly line mode into a more collaborative, inquiry-based model.

    5. In schools organi-zed in assembly-line instruction, children often use intent participation to learn toengage in or resist the authority relations and the lesson format of the assembly-linestructure itself

      Connection with Becker - assembly line instruction teaches students what they need to learn to be the cogs in the machine, not necessarily the content the teacher is trying to teach.

    1. The facilitation ap-proachcreated opportunities for youth to participate in a variety of leadershiptasks. Youth participants routinely initiated the meetings, explained the agenda,and helped keep the group on task.

      This seems to reflect Becker's discussion of evaluation in apprenticeships and work settings - progress is made as the learner is ready and success is immediately observable. Practice and evaluation occurs repeatedly and practically, includes human relations too

    2. Adult neutrality extended to decisions about the content of the project. Adultsrefrained from directly teaching a particular political stance or from voting on thechoice of campaign topic.

      I wonder how this student centered (adult out) model supports and encourages Nasir and Cook's Ideational Resources? Does this freedom allow for more exploration and maturation of ideas about oneself and one's relationship to the practice and the larger world?

    3. Also, they view their role as temporary, “fad-ing” over time to enable youth to take progressively more responsibility for activi-ties

      This suggests the evolving identities of the students - similar to Rogoff's examples of learners eventually taking over or jumping in on work when they are ready

    4. Many argue, for example, that youths’ participation in social change requires themto understand systemic legacies of inequality and racism in the United States,which might require some form of educational intervention by adults (Ginwright& James, 2002; Tejeda, Espinoza, & Gutierrez, 2003)

      This is a characteristic of inquiry/project based learning. Learning the history of inequality/racism while engaging in activism gives the information context. If "teachers" cannot bring this awareness to youths then you're limiting their role as a resource/FoK.

    5. Learning in this way builds identity as Nasir and Cook outlined.

    6. he principal limitation of joint work, therefore, is that youth with less experi-ence or knowledge in the domain are given little support or assistance. Althoughadults modeled expert strategies for novices, this modeling was usually tacit. Theresult was that novices played more peripheral roles throughout the planning pro-cess. This contrasted with YELL and Youth Rising, where activities were designedto foster novices’ participation.

      This made me think about LPP with respect to a time-horizon. Clearly the student above felt that this approach was rather suboptimal, but what if it had gone on for a longer period of time? Would that have been sufficient to turn that limited peripheral participation into a truly legitimate peripheral participation, and slowly allow the student to have a more central role?

    7. Alonzo,the Youth Rising coordinator, told me that he wanted organizing to be an attitudethat youth brought to their peer interactions outside of the program and not justsomething they did when they were at Youth Rising.

      Another clear example of the importance of identity formation. This is not an exercise in getting the students to come together for a time to work around organizing, but rather, to see themselves as community organizers in their daily life. Very similar to the discussion around the importance of personal stories to get A.A. members to identify themselves as alcoholics, not simply as people who attend A.A. meetings

    8. One conversation revolved around the shared observationthat youth deferred too much to the adult facilitators in small groups.

      A consequence of several years in a assembly-line model classroom?

    9. But because so much of the workwas performed collaboratively with adults, youth had fewer opportunities to prac-tice and master skills on their own, which makes it challenging to draw inferencesabout their learning. This does not, however, mean that they did not learn. Rogoffet al.’s (2003) description of “intent participation,” for example, suggests that theprocess of attentively observing an activity is a central part of the learning process.Opportunities to observe, listen to conversations, and engage in shared endeavorswith adults may be meaningful even if they do not lead to independent perfor-mance.

      Rogoff would probably argue that joint work helps youth develop identity in ways that the other GP don't because it involves both keen observation of and active participation in the environment.

    1. finished and useful product under the control of a highly skilled technician

      this reminds me of the apprentice and the master from the lave and wenger book...