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Thlog #10

            The first notable thing we did in class was looking at previous students’ reflection essays. I thought it gave me a good range of how informal I could be. Zack made the point to just have examples that could back up my claims so that’s what I’m gonna focus on. It’s nice to know though that we could use our voice in our writing. Since it is a personal reflection essay, I think it would be difficult to stop myself from talking like myself while writing about myself.

            The survey we did in class was another thing that required my voice. By “voice” I mean my thoughts and opinions. The survey was basically asking us how we felt about the class and how we would improve it. The diversity and specificity of the questions showed how much Zack really cares about what his students thought of the class and I’m glad I could provide my thoughts about it. Personally, I like it when someone cares a lot about something and I’m glad I was able to provide some kind of feedback. Typing down my opinions also taught me what I liked about the class. I mean I already know I liked it but I wasn’t sure why, so it’s nice that

I learned something about myself.

            The  Google Doc’athon was also helpful in my path towards to self-growth. Giving other people feedback got me thinking about everything we learned in class and how we could apply that to our writing. This was definitely a practice for our own paper revisions. In the process of giving some feedback to my fellow students, I was able to see potential changes to my own paper. Since the other students had similar problems to myself, it was easy to get some inspiration.

WP3

Chris Medina

Zack De Piero

Writing 2

4 March 2016

Integrating Threshold Concepts

Summary:

            For my scholarly article, I have chosen “Overcoming Barriers to Student Understanding: Threshold concepts and troublesome knowledge” by Jan H.F. Meyer and Ray Land. The article introduces the idea of “threshold concepts” which are fundamental concepts that when acquired, brings one closer to understanding the subject while triggering different perspectives on the matter. Threshold concepts have five characteristics: transformative, irreversible, integrative, bounded, and troublesome. Learning some of these concepts are problematic, putting them in the category of troublesome. Within the troublesome aspect of TC’s, there are six types of troublesome knowledge: ritual, inert, conceptually difficult, alien, tacit, and troublesome language. Understanding threshold concepts helps teachers understand students’ process of learning, thus enabling them to improve their way of teaching.

Links:

Younger Audience (For full experience open as slideshow)

Older Audience

Analysis:

            The genre I chose for younger audiences – 1^st grade to 4^th grade – is an interactive story using PowerPoint. Throughout the story, I provided choices that kids can make to change the direction of the protagonist by clicking on the choices. This is possible through PowerPoint’s hyperlinking capabilities. I wanted to make it interactive as I thought of how stories are more fun for children especially if they are part of it.

The main theme of the story that I was aiming for was for the protagonist, Alaska, to have a changes in perspective connecting it to the article “Overcoming Barriers to Student Understanding: Threshold concepts and troublesome knowledge”. I intended to make Alaska relatable to the children by letting them make the choices to solve his problems regarding, simple topics such as color, and shapes. Alaska learns and gains new perspectives throughout the story with the help of the children. He is portrayed to have problems that he must solve, but in reality, it is the children who are solving these problems. By allowing children to be in control of Alaska’s successes and failures, I think kids are able to learn with Alaska. I thought threshold concepts was too complicated of a topic for children, so I decided not to explicitly mention it. This constraint, as said in Laura Carroll’s essay in Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing, “limit the way discourse is delivered or communicated” (Carroll). I did however include the main idea of TC’s.

The main idea of TC’s is the change in perspective one gets by learning something new. The story is set up where there are multiple events that lead to Alaska gaining a new perspective after learning something new. For example, Alaska’s favorite color is purple, but after learning that purple sea urchins are dangerous, he realizes that the notion of purple can expand to more than just aesthetics. When kids are first being taught shapes, they have those toys where they put blocks into holes of the same shape. Young kids might think that blocks fit into holes of the same shape and stop there. They might not understand the concept of size where blocks fit in holes because of the smaller size of the blocks or the bigger size of the holes. This is a form of troublesome knowledge known as ritual knowledge, which is knowledge that is routinely learned without getting a grasp of the bigger picture (Meyer). Simple as the topic seem to be, young children may still have a difficult time comprehending.

My decision to pick an animal as the protagonist is because many popular children’s characters are anthropomorphic animals. I think it is fun, cute, and add a little bit of fantasy that child readers enjoy. Since the protagonist is a sea otter, I chose a blue background that is similar to the sea. I used bright backgrounds and fonts to keep children attracted to the story.  Alaska’s and his teacher’s lines were put inside a textbox to imply that the lines are being spoken by them and not being narrated.

My original plan for an older genre is a restaurant menu, but I didn’t know how to put enough textual description that will show my genre’s connection to my scholarly article. So I decided to make a Yelp review of a restaurant. This way, I can describe the food and connect it to threshold concepts. Like, in my interactive story genre, I explicitly left out threshold concepts. I do not think that the average Yelp reviewer is aware of what TC’s are. However, I did include the idea that TC’s represent. In my PowerPoint, the interactive story is used to teach kids about different perspectives through examples, but my Yelp review’s purpose is to just show examples of gaining new perspectives. My main goal was to demonstrate how food is information.

People have different likes and tastes in food and sometimes it’s because of preconceptions they have about the food. After someone tastes a certain type of food for the first time, they get information on what it tastes like and how they feel tasting it. This could lead to them liking the food or hating it. In the second review, Marissa after having a bad experience with shrimp assumes that all types of seafood is bad until she tried her boyfriend’s which she thought was okay. Not bad, but okay. Some people who have never personally tasted food but only heard about how it tastes will gain a new perspective after they taste it themselves. For Choudhury, his inexperience with eating beef, possibly because of religious reasons, led him to be unaware of the hype that is beef. Once he tasted the vegetarian imitation of beef and learns of beef’s taste, he becomes part of the hype. The third reviewer, has his own reasons for eating at “One for All”, which is for the spicy wings. For each level of spiciness that he passes, he gets new information of spiciness and enters a portal that changes his perspective on the spiciness of each level. After reaching the 15^th level, he may think that level 5 was not as bad as he thought when he was in level 4. I gave all these reviewers different purposes of eating in “One for All” to represent the vast perspectives that people have, especially when it comes to food. This allows the readers of the reviews to relate to the reviewers, which builds up their ethos, “the credibility of the rhetor” (Carroll). They are seen as the normal everyday people who have the same appreciation for food as the readers.

Works Cited

Carroll, Laura. Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing. West Lafayette, IN: Parlor, 2010. Print.

Meyer, Jan, and Ray Land. Overcoming Barriers to Student Understanding: Threshold Concepts and Troublesome Knowledge. Print.

Thlog #9

            Coming up with ideas for my WP3 was difficult for me. It is both a gift and a curse to have so much freedom with choosing a genre. It feels like picking what you want to eat in a really long menu; sure it’s nice that there are a lot of options, but there’s so many to choose from you can’t decide. Once I did decide on my genres, there was this doubt whether I can keep them or not. Connecting the topic of my article to the genre is the hardest part for me and what keeps me from sticking to my chosen genres. What I learned this week is that it’s totally fine to let your first ideas go. I have a habit of keeping my original ideas because I feel as if I’ve put so much effort in cultivating them that it’s a waste to throw them away. Sometimes sticking to them works because I get ideas that make them work out in the end. But other times I think to myself about the potential my ideas have and I force them in a direction where they’re not supposed to go. I go through more trouble keeping the old rather than investing in the new, and it’s hard for to figure out when to leave or stay.

            The peer review activity helped me open my eyes to what I needed to do. Reading the comments made by the peer reviewers sparked more ideas in my head which I thought had the same potential as my old ideas. Having the mindset that I could let go of the old got me thinking even more. I did not completely abandoned my old ideas used them to boost my new ones. Now my mind doesn’t feel stuck on particular ideas; it’s the ideas that stick to my mind.

PB3A

The topic I have chosen is “Overcoming Barriers to Student Understanding: Threshold Concepts and Troublesome Knowledge” by Jan Meyer and Ray Land. The article focuses on “threshold concept”, a concept that lead to new ways of understanding in order to progress in a particular discipline. Thinking about the definition of “threshold concept” sparked some ideas for my genre transformations. The key words “order” and “progress” stuck to me which led me think of my genre for older audiences: restaurant menus. I thought of “order” as in ordering from a menu, and “progress” as in you can’t skip the entrée and go to desert. A restaurant menu has multiple different compartments from appetizers to drinks and I think there are plenty of material I can use. The article also mentions barriers that the topic of food will easily connect to. There are people who have restrictions on what they eat, whether it be because of their diet, allergies, or simply their personal preference. Threshold concept leads to new ways of thinking, and for someone who is trying a certain type of food for the first time and likes it, they may be opened up to a more diverse food palate. To be more specific, I will probably choose Japanese cuisine as I think it is too exotic for some people’s comfort zone. And sushi is also my favorite food. I will try to utilize the vast variety of food menus and add other options in the menu such as vegetarian options, spiciness, and combo meals.

For my genre for younger audiences, I could not help but think of a story of a protagonist learning something new and being able to use that newfound knowledge to conquer his problems. For example, in the videogame Pokémon, the player must teach their Pokémon moves that would help them continue on to new destinations that were restricted before. Videogames provide many of these examples about obtaining something new, a skill or an item, and then progressing in the game. However, these newly obtained items do not fit the whole “new way of understanding” concept which goes much deeper than just simply getting new things. But since the required genre is for younger audiences, I may be able to get away with it and just find a way to connect it to the article’s idea of “threshold concepts”. I want to avoid doing a simple children’s story so I might do something pertaining to videogames. I’m not too sure exactly what genre I will do but what comes to mind is an interactive storyline on Powerpoint for elementary schoolers. If I do take that route, I will provide a story of a protagonist that has multiple endings. I will set it up like a videogame where the player can win or lose depending on the choices they make. If they do lose, I will give an explanation as to why the players lost. The storyline will revolve around “threshold concepts” and will teach the players about it. Instead of the protagonist picking up items and skills, they will pick up knowledge to get them through their journey, emphasizing how new ways of thinking contribute to progress.

Thlog #8

On Monday, the videos we watched tied really well into the course’s teachings. I thought it resembled how writers have different perspectives on the same topic and use particular moves to fit their purpose. Unlike writers, I felt like the artists painted the way they did for the sake of themselves. Since they are artists, they stuck closer to self-expression instead of appropriating their work to a specific audience. Not to say that writers aren’t artists, it just seems like writers have more constraints in the art of rhetoric to clearly send their message to their targeted audience. On the other hand, the painters didn’t seem to have a targeted audience and had more freedom with showing their own style. I still thought the video was relevant to the class though since it’s a good example of how a topic can be seen in multiple angles. Rooted from that one ordinary tree, four distinct trees sprouted.

When Zack showed us examples of past WP3’s, I think what confused people the most is that their scholarly articles didn’t revolve on the topic of writing. I think the issue of how to use the content of the articles troubled some people, including me, because the topic of writing is not structured like a story such as the feud between Russia and America. Personally, a story is what I first think of when transforming a genre so I just have to break out of that mindset. Having my first topic choices taken actually helped since the pressure of picking a new one sparked new ideas that diverged from the “story” model. It is reassuring when Zack said to not think about it too much. Apparently there’s more freedom to WP3 than WP2 so I’ll go ahead and trust that. It is true that writing about writing will help us understand the topic better.

Thlog #7

            On Wednesday’s class, I thought it was pretty funny when Zack brought up “attacking the page”. This is something I’ve been doing since high school, and it’s nice to hear that it’s not just me who does this. Makes me feel a little bit saner. When I do this though, I never think of it as “attacking the page”. It’s just me releasing some stress through hitting the keyboard. So I don’t actually type “fighting words”, just random letters that my fingers encounter, for instance, “safhsdfhsdahfd”. Sometimes you just gotta let some steam out, which I had to do for my WP2. Also, it’s good exercise for my fingers.

            During the socrative.com activity, it was nice to get a glimpse of how others opened with their paper. I noticed that many of their hooks started out using the topic of their chosen sources. For my WP2, my hook talked about the actual prompt of the paper, which involves the rhetorical features of my chosen texts. I feel like I totally disregarded my topic of K-pop and didn’t incorporate it enough on my paper. Writing was not as fun because my paper hardly talked about K-pop. I also feel like my topic didn’t leave a mark on my readers which I wanted. Since the prompt of the paper was about the writers’ writing, I wasn’t too sure how much of K-pop I should include or if any. I tried to read my sources as a writer so my mind kinda left out the content of the sources. I guess it’s up to me to find a good balance for that. And it does make sense to make the hook about the topic since I’ll talk about the prompt later anyways. I need something to connect to my thesis and using the prompt as the hook would be redundant.