Camping with Ihde and Rambo

On page 14 of Chapter 1, Ihde discusses American campers that go camping with a "cocoon" of technology and presents, wittingly or not, a new case for the argument of Natural Born Cyborgs. Not many of us could just walk into the woods and survive like Rambo, but we still want to establish some connection back to our roots (pun intended). However, that requires us to use machines to survive in the environments where our ancestors thrived. I think this is a case where we experience the world as the human-machine. We are now so accustomed and dependent on technology for our survival that the car, camper, etc stops being a vehicle we travel in, and becomes an extension of ourselves. We can not survive without our technology, it is one of our vital organs. So what does that mean for our Navy SEALs and Green Berets? Are we not the same same species, and if not, which one of us is the advanced species? Most of them can learn technology, and often have to given the advances military weaponry has made. Yet, I sincerely doubt that most of our class (myself included) could ever handle the primitive life styles that they thrive in. So, I wonder, if our technology is causing us to devolve.

Education and Multimodalitiy

In Hands and Writing, Sarah Arroyo wrote, "Thus, we would like to resurrect the notion of conferences as places to confer with others: a place to 'confer or consult with others [...] esp. on an important or serious matter.' " This is a part of her larger criticism of pedagogical conferences, that they tend to resort to the "sage on the stage" form of teaching that educators have lauded against. Although I do appreciate her observation, "An increasingly ubiquitous buzzword in the discourse of rhetoric and composition is "multimodal" since text, sound, and image are deployed with equal ease in networked environments." I would say that there is a definitive need for a "multimodal" approach to the classroom. In the context of writing, the various avenues through which the teacher and student(s) can explore composition is clearly amplified this way. However, I must take serious exception to criticism of a speaker in a large classroom that seems to be the latest educational gospel. I for one, learn quite well by listening to a speaker and taking notes and I find it to be the most efficient way me to learn a large amount of new information. However, I will concede that boredom can detract from the learning process and that, boring or not, the incorporation of online devices into this atmosphere can enhance the retention of knowledge. Bearing this in mind, I do feel that the "conference style learning," and online learning tools, that Arroyo promotes, have limited value. I feel that they useful in order to enhance the understanding of a part of a larger idea; I also feel that there is a tendency among students to digress off of topic, or to focus on structural aspects of online devices that detract from learning the primary subject matter. With this educational heresy aside, I wonder if I am in the minority in this, or if there is some type of group think within educational elites at hand.