My extended notes on this chapter are included below, but this week I decided to try using Realtimeboard for my technology challenge. I was impressed by how easy it is to use the "post it notes" feature to just start making notes, although it didn't seem super easy to make lots of formatting changes to font, size, etc. (although that's the price one pays sometimes for a really clean interface. This is something that student could use when doing collaborative work in groups to brainstorm ideas, take notes, and compile research together under various categories. 

This week's reading acknowledged three distinct ways of knowing and learning: "committed knowledge" of the modern past, "knowledge relativism" of more recent times, and "knowledge repertories" towards new learning. What interested me most in this reading was the differences drawn between the second and third ways of knowing and learning, as I find myself very engaged in (and still committed to) the "knowledge relativism," although I wouldn't necessarily use that same language to describe it. This, in part, begins to answer some of my questions from earlier weeks regarding critical theory's place (or absence) in comp/rhet and pedagogical research. I didn't find the concerns about the equality of teaching 'cultural relativism' and its supposed 'fragmentation' to be very convincing at all. I'm not saying that those situations don't happen, just that it has much less to do with a postmodern ideology than it does with the bureaucratic politics of K-12 and (now) higher education. This so-called fragmentation may be nothing more than a disparate exposure to ideological thinking about the world around us (and such critical thinking is always ideological). In the "marketplace of ideas" model of higher education, professors with differing outlooks and personalities approach their content and the(ir) world in unique ways; yes, this is fragmentary in nature, but to switch to a more standardized approach (as K-12 has bought into) is a dangerous alternative. One of the values of an American education in particular is the wealth of knowledge, outlooks, and experiences that student can have, and that differs from class to class, and institution to institution. The chart on page 241 looks really great, but it honestly makes me nervous: it looks a little too perfect, a little too neat, and I wonder what the loss incurred by such neatness might be. This model seems to be created by those who, I would suspect, perhaps learn less by means of abstract conceptualization, and that difference in personality impacts the 'theory' they're putting forth here. The idea of "knowledge repertoires" strikes me (on face value; I'd have to read more to be sure) as an effort to more equitably elevate certain kinds of knowing to other kinds of knowing, an effort very popular in today's field of education but an effort that, if we were to turn to critical theory (and the 2nd way of knowing), might be brought into more criticism by those (like Jean-Francois Lyotard) who criticize these "grand narratives of Enlightenment" and the push for "progress," which must always be approached wish suspicion. To suggest that this is now obsolete is, perhaps, as we may see in coming years, a way of controlling knowledge (or at the very least restraining it). I realize this is probably a very contrarian view, but I think we have to be careful. I do a lot of work with Outcomes Assessment, which attempts to accommodate and respond to this new way of learning, but I don't think it has to come at the cost of the so-called "knowledge relativism" (which is a seriously misguided phrase). 

Heather's Socrative BR7 - I enjoyed reading Heather's review of Socrative and Brain Rules, chapter 7, particular the bit about the use of mobile technology in the classroom and how to effectively do that. Thanks, Heather, for the awesome screenshots, which really made understanding the process of using Socrative easy. The ability to do quizzes in class and then instantly get feedback on a mobile device is an example of a the kind of interactive learning that New Learning is also promoting. Awesome job!

Kim's Glogster NL7 - I'm glad you didn't find Glogster too difficult. Perhaps a few of us complained enough about it to set up unrealistic expectations. Haha. I agree with you that Glogster doesn't seem to have a whole lot of value added that would justify its cost over that of competing software. It's interesting to use though. That's weird about the ampersands, which speaks to its seemingly dated web architecture.