Submitted by Cathy Davidson on Jan 29, 2009, 06:23 AM
NaNatThis is an update from Week Three of "This Is Your Brain on the Internet," taught in Duke's marvelous ISIS (Information Science + Information Studies) program. There are fifteen students in the class, plus myself, TA Katy, and Teaching Apprentice Lindsey. The three of us are what I call "new style English teachers." That is, we're each savvy scientifically in different ways. Katy is a professional stage designer who is a tech wizard. Lindsey worked with primates as an undergrad. And the class members span the spectrum of just about all of the disciplines but with a quite high-level of involvement in computer science, engineering, and pre-med, in addition to strong language-skills, excellent reading, and inquisitiveness. In a typical class, as many as 12 or 13 students out of 15 will ask a question or venture a comment. Interestingly, no one has a laptop open in this class so I've never had to address an issue that many of my peers report in their teaching these days.