Blog Post #1

Blog Post #1

Learning to summarize larger bodies of work will be extremely helpful when it comes to pulling out key information needed for critical analysis. Often times, it is difficult to capture the author’s purpose when there is a mass of information; it becomes easy to get overwhelmed by long papers or articles. Summaries are beneficial because it captivates, not only the overall message of the text, but also the author’s purpose in writing the text. In order to form an accurate and useful summary, we must critically evaluate the work. A well-founded, appropriate summary can only be written when the text is fully understood by the author of the summary. As individuals, we must pull out the facts and ideas that we think are essential in understanding the article and exclude the “fatty” or unnecessary pieces of the text. While we may think of large bodies of work as articles or stories, often times, we forget that text is all around us. For example, texts messages, tweets, advertisements, etc. are all forms of text that can be evaluated, critiqued, and summarized. Until recently, I didn’t notice the many forms of text surrounding our daily lives. Advertisements on a billboard, iMessages between friends, Facebook status’ or Instagram captions can all be considered pieces of text. Because I now recognize these many forms, analyzing has become much simpler and much more noticeable.

In Todd Gilman’s article Combating Myths About Distance Education, Todd defends not only online educators but also the student’s completing the online courses. Gilman begins his article by stating the fact that while he teaches online courses, he is also the Academic Librarian at Yale University, thus giving him the professional credit he deserves. He continues by noting the fact that he feels as though he has helped students through these online exchanges but other people, more specifically other educators, do not feel the same. Todd states that while some comments do not initially seem rude, they do contain “little jabs” questioning his profession. Although these classes are not happening face-to-face, Todd Gilman is still an educator and the people he teaches are still students. While he agrees that online teaching is not always ideal, some students learn more effectively through online courses. As in normal face-to-face classrooms, the effort given by students and teachers is essential to effective learning; the effort put in is shown in the results. Todd also notes that in his experiences as an educator, students who put in lots of hard work and succeed in the normal classroom also succeed in nontraditional online courses. The same goes with face-to-face educators and online educators. With proper organization and effective presentation, transitioning from classroom courses to online courses is simple. Clearly, Todd Gilman is pro-online courses, yet he still mentions the hardships of distance education; for example, he mentions how difficult it is to be flexible. Dates must be hard-set and if a deadline is extended, it is crucial to let each and every student know. Graduate students vs Undergraduate students also play a massive role in determining effectiveness of online teaching. Gilman states that generally, under grad courses involve “lots of lecturing” and graduate classes typically don’t. While he lists the pros and cons to each method, he ultimately states that online educators and students deserve to be acknowledged in the same light as face-to-face educators and students.