Thursday, September 8, 2016
Classroom Makeover Close Reading
This passage from Cathy Davidson's "Project Classroom Makeover" explains the benefits crowdsourcing can have over relying on comments by professionals. She states that "...the more expert we are, the more likely we are to be limited in what we conceive to be the problem, let alone the answer" (Davidson 51). As we begin to specialize in one topic, we lose interest and knowledge in other areas, thus preventing us from making connections between different areas. The introduction to The New Humanities Reader emphasized the importance of making connections in order to learn new things. Through Crowdsourcing information, we do not limit ourselves to looking for an answer in one direction, but instead open up the possibility to learn a new lesson we might not have thought was possible. An important word used in this passage was "hierarchies." She states, "While formal education typically teaches hierarchies of what's worth paying attention to, crowdsourcing is different..." (Davidson 51). Davidson uses this term when referring to the modern educational system to reinforce the fact that their are limits to formal education. "Hierarchy" is a term most often used for a government system where there are people with power who rank over others and are able to tell them what to do. By using this word to describe education, we are able to feel the sense of powerlessness that students have and the limits they have in what they are taught. Students have no flexibility in what they are taught in the classroom, and that is why crowdsourcing is so different; it opens up new possibilities for knowledge. Another important word Davidson uses is "collectively." This word gives us a sense of community that we can relate to crowdsourcing. By feeling like we are part of something bigger, we are attracted to the idea of crowdsourcing information from the public instead of relying on experts. This passage works by giving us the feeling of power that was once taken away by formal education. Davidson writes, "No matter how expert we are..., we can improve, we can learn, by sharing insights and working together collectively" (Davidson 51). This sentence, in context, gives us the feeling that, together, we can learn more than experts. This is important to the entire essay because it allows us to be excited about crowdsourcing and about changing the classroom altogether. All in all, Davidson's form engages readers and conveys her message (that crowdsourcing can be better than relying on experts) clearly.
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The author's main point in writing this passage is to explain what crowdsourcing is, and to contrast crowdsourcing to a more traditional, formal education. Davidson starts by addressing "credentialing, or relying on top-down expertise" (Davidson 51) as the traditional form of learning where someone with a degree (or proper 'credentials') teaches people of less experience within that field ("top-down" (davidson 51)). From there, Davidson looks upon one the problems with expertise, being "the more expert we are, the more likely we are to be limited in what we even conceive to be the problem, let alone the answer" (Davidson 51), which when extrapolated, means that the more expert we are in our field, the more likely we are to think in a certain way (based on our field of expertise). This simple sentence gives Davidson's argument for the article, "Project Classroom Makeover" as a whole more credence by pointing out that in a traditional classroom setting, everything is standardized and that "the more standardized our assessment, the more kids fail" (Davidson 61). The kids who "fail" (Davidson 61) may not be good in math, but they can be musically gifted or be able to recite full Shakespearean plays - they just fail by a narrow minded set of standards which crowdsourcing eliminates. As stated, "crowdsourcing is suspicious of expertise...it assumes that no one of us is individually smarter than all of us collectively" (Davidson 51). Crowdsourcing allows these "kids [who would] fail" (Davidson 62) by the traditional education system's standard to actually thrive by contributing their own ways of thinking and ideas that may not be found in someone with a degree in astrophysics or musical performance. Crowdsourcing allows these kids to think differently than the "hierarchies of what's worth paying attention to" (Davidson 51) because it essentially has no hierarchy. The idea of a hierarchy is that one object, person or idea has more power than another, but it's an idea that cannot actually exist in regards to crowdsourcing because "what's worth paying attention to" (Davidson 51) becomes a matter of an individual's perception. By presenting a problem to a huge mass of people from all kinds of backgrounds as ipods were in the reading, everyone can bring their own thoughts and ideas to the table and provide their own insight. One doesn't need to have a degree in mathematics to say that the ipod could've been used to record a mathematics lecture, but that doesn't mean that a mathematics student wouldn't think of that. The same goes for a chemistry student who would use the device to note chemical structures or an engineer who used the device to better understand the mechanics that go into something as sophisticated as an ipod. Without crowdsourcing, there's no merge of ideas from individuals of different fields and the experts will continually dominate their own respective fields. With crowdsourcing, the experts can work in conjunction with one another to find solutions to any given number of problems.
ReplyDeleteMake this into a separate entry rather than a reply to Katie's post, Zach.
DeleteKatie-- this is a very well-composed post. I like the way that you make connections here to both the introduction of the NHR, and the way that you connect educational and political hierarchies. Do you think that Davidson's crowdsourcing efforts also have an analagous political application?
Delete