In this course, students will practice college-level critical writing while exploring tools and techniques for teaching and learning. From the printing press to the Amazon Kindle, from Plato’s Academy to massive open online courses (MOOCs), new tools and ideas have found applications in education. Some tools have been evolutionary while others have been so new and different that they “disrupt” the status quo. What external factors make such disruptive changes possible and even successful? Which of the new tools available today will be useful for teaching and learning in the long term, and which will be just fads? The class will consider which innovations are truly helpful to students, which are merely evolutionary and which are truly disruptive. We will also consider the other sense of “disruptive”. Do some tools take learners so far from the subject that they are distracting and disruptive to learning? Students will have an opportunity to research the arguments for and against the use of new tools in education, and will learn about tools that they want to implement or possibly avoid in their own education.

The Secret History Donna Tartt Vintage International
The God of Small Things Arundhati Roy Random House