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I was enraged at my Professional Writing professor in my senior year of
college.
We had a major assignment to pick a topic, research it, trace our research
with "progress memos" and then, at the end of the semester, we had to
present our research. My professor didn't want me to research my chosen
topic. I did it anyway. She thought there wouldn't be enough material to
write a 20 page research paper. I disagreed. I did my research. I wrote my
paper. I got an A-.
That said, I say give the student a list of generic examples like:
How lasers are created.
How black holes are formed
What happens chemically when you mix water with gasoline.
What happens when you submit a search through http://www.google.com
What happens when you type in a URL
and then let the student pick something that interests them, but is
something they've not researched. No teacher wants 20 essays about how
lasers are created. Let the students have fun.
Currently, due to my home situation, I'm interested in what techniques can
be used to persuade a 2.5 year-old to not suck on his hands out of habit.
(Tried vinegar and <gulp> he liked the taste.) Don't think that would be
'technology' though.
Paul
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Bruce Byfield [SMTP:bbyfield -at- progeny -dot- com]
> Sent: Monday, May 21, 2001 2:52 PM
> To: TECHWR-L
> Cc: techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com
> Subject: Re: Tech writing class (was suggestions needed...)
>
> Keith Cronin wrote:
> >
> > > Were I designing your course, I would focus intensely on working with
> > > extremely complex information.
> >
> > Very good idea, Andrew.
> >
> > Without forcing students to spend too much time studying a specific area
> > of technology that may not be useful/pertinent to them in the future,
> can
> > you suggest a good generic example?
> >
Bruce Byfield wrote:
> It's not the specific information that students need to learn: it's
> learning how to learn and generally deal with complex information that's
> important.
>
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