Fluent Essays

(What is the date?) • (What do I plan to study; what do I hope to learn?) Here you write a few complete sentences about what you are doing (I am in class; I am in a cafe, etc.), and what you plan to study or learn (I am reading McCarthy’s _The Road_, and I want to find out where in the world the man and boy are, and what happened to destroy the environment.) • (What materials am I using?) Here you note what you are reading and who wrote it, or what you are otherwise engaged with (video, research, writing, etc.) • (What people or works are referenced that I want to follow up on?) Here you note any books, articles, TED Talks, or people, etc., mentioned in relation to the subject you are pursuing. Use Google or other research tools to determine how far you want to look into them. • (What words, terms, dates, people, or institutions am I encountering that I do not know?) Here you list words, etc. that you do not know. You should look them up immediately, or as soon as you have the resources available to do so. NEVER SKIP OVER ANYTHING THAT YOU DO NOT KNOW! The whole point is to get more informed about everything because you cannot be certain of your future wants and needs. • (How much time did I really put in? How many pages did I read? How many words did I write?) Here you note what you actually did. This journal is for you alone, so lying is futile. • (What did I learn?) Here you answer this question in three good sentences or fewer. • (What questions arose?) Questions are the key to it all. • (How is my learning going? What will make it go better?) Here you write three sentences or fewer, remembering to be firm but merciful. Be specific in answering the last question on_the_learning_journal.pdf learning_journal_template_2.pdf Unformatted Attachment Preview The Learning Journal 10/5/19, 1:14 AM On the Learning Journal The learning journal is one of the basic tools and building blocks of this course, so I will expatiate on its form, function, and theory a bit. And as we live in the age of Google, when information is, paradoxically, the most abundant and most valuable thing around us, I wish to declare that the learning journal is the harbinger, conduit, and avatar of the third Copernican Revolution. The first Copernican Revolution turned in 1514 C.E. when Nicholaus Copernicus presented the case for a heliocentric rather than geocentric cosmos. In plainer English, Copernicus argued that the mathematics of the case indicate that the Sun, rather than the Earth, is the center of the observable universe, thus reversing the Ptolemaic view that had prevailed since 1028 C.E. As the ancient songwriting duo, Lennon and McCartney sang, “Good day, Sunshine.” The second Copernican Revolution turned in 1781 C.E. when the German philosopher Immanuel Kant argued in his _Critique of Pure Reason_ that we humans cause the world to appear as it does rather than the world’s causing us to see it in some particular way. This because our eyes and ears present the world to us, and the world has no choice in how they do it. As Michael Jackson has it, “We are the world.” The third Copernican Revolution is upon us now. The demigods at Google have replaced the Nuremberg Funnel with the Mountain View Straw. The Nuremberg Funnel is a centuries-old device through which professors and other authorities could pour knowledge directly into the skulls of students. Since it seems doubtful that such a handy invention ever actually existed, beyond the horizons the 17th-Century German poetical imagination, I’ll take it as a metaphor for the processes of explaining and lecturing that account for so much of the traditional teaching-learning dynamic. In that same spirit, though reversed, in what I am calling the third Copernican Revolution, the Mountain View Straw (my appellation for Google’s search engine) is an algorithm through which anyone (anybody: you and I) can imbibe, inhale, or ingest ALL of the combined knowledge and wisdom of all of the smiling anthropoids that have ever walked this Earth. But, unless you are the Rain Man or Funes the Memorious you will probably have some challenges retaining such knowledge. Worse, you may find that, like those personages, you lose yourself in the sheer volume of the knowledge and discover that it makes you not a whit wiser. Comes the wall, comes the trebuchet! The learning journal is an old-school algorithm to manage the seemingly unmanageable. A 100-sheet, college-ruled Page 1 of 3 The Learning Journal 10/5/19, 1:14 AM composition book (or pdf) can be your compass, sexton, and Harrison Chronometer as you navigate the two oceans of the world’s knowledge and your own future. The revolutionary implications of the learning journal are that YOU, and not I will determine what you need to learn, what you want to learn, and what you must learn. This because YOU, and not I must voyage into YOUR future. As Nathaniel Hawthorne writes in _The Blithedale Romance_, “It needs a wild steersman when we voyage through chaos! The anchor is up, --farewell! I can share some of what I may know from many years and many schools, but I truly do not know what world you will make your way into, so I want you to learn to shift for yourselves. Melville’s Ishmael proudly declares that “a whale-ship was [his] Yale College and his Harvard.” So let your phone, your laptop, and your most beloved dreams be your Yale College and your Harvard. Here is how I suggest you start doing so. • Read and annotate the class assignments and note the authors, titles, and pages in your learning journal. • • • • • • • • Never skip over a word, name, or date that you do not know, but look them up and note them in your journal. When a reference is made to another text or writer, note them, look them up, and look into them later. When your reading or your contemplation of your reading produces a new thought, then right it in your journal immediately. Use your phone and your computer as reference: ways to access information. If you prefer to read long texts on a screen, then do so. Reverse (flip-flop) the amount of time you now spend on social media and viewing streaming media with the amount of time you spend reading text. The more you read, the more you will connect and understand. There is currently no substitute for this. Always date your learning journal entries, summarize the new knowledge you have gained in your session, and write down how you plan to continue building on what you have learned. Evaluate your learning performance at least once a week. Be honest, but be merciful (There is a lot to learn). I ask you to make eight entries according to the templates supplied for this class. After you have made these eight entries, you may make your entries in any way that helps you, but you MUST make at least one entry for each day of class (It is best to make an entry for each time you engage in learning activities for fifteen minutes or longer). Page 2 of 3 The Learning Journal • • • • 10/5/19, 1:14 AM Through these entries you will begin to see what you want to learn as well as as what you must learn. Through these entries you will develop your own standards for learning and use them instead of what you THINK my standards are. Your learning journal will be the true record of your performance in this course (because it is all about learning), and it will be the bulk of your case for the grade you will award yourself. I will help you as much as you let me, but I cannot live in your mind or in your heart, nor do I know where you will go or what you will need to know to get there. In some ways, you are always alone in the house of the heart, so learn to feed yourself, teach yourself, and, in the end, love yourself. Page 3 of 3 Learning Journal Template 1/11/20, 11:15 PM (What is the date?) • • • • • • • • (What do I plan to study; what do I hope to learn?) Here you write a few complete sentences about what you are doing (I am in class; I am in a cafe, etc.), and what you plan to study or learn (I am reading McCarthy’s _The Road_, and I want to find out where in the world the man and boy are, and what happened to destroy the environment.) (What materials am I using?) Here you note what you are reading and who wrote it, or what you are otherwise engaged with (video, research, writing, etc.) (What people or works are referenced that I want to follow up on?) Here you note any books, articles, TED Talks, or people, etc., mentioned in relation to the subject you are pursuing. Use Google or other research tools to determine how far you want to look into them. (What words, terms, dates, people, or institutions am I encountering that I do not know?) Here you list words, etc. that you do not know. You should look them up immediately, or as soon as you have the resources available to do so. NEVER SKIP OVER ANYTHING THAT YOU DO NOT KNOW! The whole point is to get more informed about everything because you cannot be certain of your future wants and needs. (How much time did I really put in? How many pages did I read? How many words did I write?) Here you note what you actually did. This journal is for you alone, so lying is futile. (What did I learn?) Here you answer this question in three good sentences or fewer. (What questions arose?) Questions are the key to it all. (How is my learning going? What will make it go better?) Here you write three sentences or fewer, remembering to be firm but merciful. Be specific in answering the last question. Page 1 of 1 ... Purchase answer to see full attachment