Writing & Computers: The "final" week of class

Watching Professor Welsch's "Revisiting 'A Vision of Students Today'" humorously reminds me of my surrounding environments in each of my classes. You find people texting, phones ringing, laptop usage, and people doing other things online (MySpace, Facebook, E-mail biggest offenders) while/instead of participating in class. There are bored students, sleeping students, and then the few who actually engage in the learning process through class discussions and teamwork.

There are times when I feel these students' actions, though not always right, are justified. Some classes students are forced to take to graduate, and they are forced to sit through what they deem "uninteresting lectures." Some people may even be required to take classes that do not interest them for their major. I, along with these other students, have felt like I learn more outside of the classrooms and on my own time than in the confinements of those walls and times.

Sometimes we may even feel like we do nothing or learn nothing in the class periods, and are just filling seats and wasting our valuable time (and money). Some teachers we may not like. It could be that we disagree with their teaching style. Sometimes, though, it seems like there are some professors who are just here to collect another paycheck. These professors either do not have the talents to teach or do but are simply uninterested in teaching/lecturing or bringing energy to a subject to make it interesting to the class.

Thanks to technology, we do not only have new ways to communicate; we also have new ways to learn. I learn much about life spending time with friends and family, taking part in cultural activities, watching, reading, and listening. I learned some Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) techniques in a class, but I refined those skills by visiting an HTML tutorial and doing practice HTML code. With this kind of step-by-step practice, I improved greatly as an HTML coder (though I still have a bit to go).

This concludes the "Writing & Computers" portion of Scrambled Brain. However, look for there to be a spin-off blog where I can talk more about technology and writing/communication styles in the near future.