First off, because I'm so late with actually posting this blog, and I know that no one except you, Professor Arola will be reading it at this late date... I'd like to apologize once again for missing this assignment. It won't happen again.
Let's me just start without an tip toeing around a cheesy introduction that says nothing. Basically, what Johndon Johnson Eilola (that is a mouthful of a name huh?) is talking about it what we discussed in class. He wants to use symbolic-analytic work as a means to cross bridges and solve conflicts. Prof. Arola asked us in class how we might use it as a framework for any class in the whole world we could teach. It was a fascinating question and now that I've had an extra week (shame on me) to think about it, I have a more developed answer.
Originally I wanted to teach a class about breaching the gap between print and electronic writing. But now, after re-reading Eilola's definition: "...symbolic-analytic workers are valued for their ability to understand both users and technologies," I would like to hone that potential class down to teaching students the most efficient ways to combine print and electronic sources for research (201). So many electronic sources are looked down upon as being "unworthy," so to speak, and Eilola suggests that it might be possible for me to teach a combo of print sources and e-sources for students to get the most out of research. If I get his theory right. Which I hope I did.
In this potential class I would like to teach, I see a connection to the next article we read, "Web Literacy: Challenges and Opportunities for Research in a New Medium," by Sorapure, Inglesby, and Yatchisin. They speak of using the "World Wide Web" as a source, and the ways to do so effectively (Sorapure et al 333). First they suggest that to use it ("it" being the internet), you must ensure that students have literacy in this type of source. They go on, in sectionalized lines of thought, about evaluating websites, what to value -- "content and authorship -- in a website before using it as a source, how to teach the visual literacy that accompanies the web to students, and the intertextuality that the internet ultimately offers ( Sorapure et al 337).
By linking a potential user to new information, they make using the internet as a source fun and challenging without the risk of a student using "BobsCivilWarSiteGOCONFEDERACYORGO HOME).com" as a legitimate source.
Now, in our FYC classrooms, we know and hopefully encourage students to use the internet as a vast resource at their fingertips. Countless original documents are electronically archived for academic access and to sift through the pile (because there isn't an online reference librarian...yet) takes a literacy that we hope we can teach our students. Michelle Sidler, author of "Web Research and Genres in Online Databases: When the Glossy Page Disappears," states that databases can help narrow the search for the needle in the haystack. The metaphorical needle is of course the one article by the one author who agrees with your reserach.
To know where online to look is something Sidler dubs spatial orientation and it can be used to oriente oneself into an ongoing academic conversation. Databases help with this . Citing Eilola (ah, I'm seeing your connections between these articles a little more clearly now professor), she states "...systems like PROQUEST present 'immense, dynamic spaces through which users move'" (qtd. in Sidler 355).
Okay, now I'm losing my train of thought so I'll just wrap this up. It is our duty as FYC teachers to engage with electronic sources and teach them to our students to bridge the gap between bad and efficient research. Their job is to use the lessons we teach them in future classes and reminisce with bobscivilwarsite.com even for nostalgia's sake.
I read this :]
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