Fletcher posts Annotated Webography

The Annotated Webography

Please visit the six websites listed below; your annotated entries are to be produced on your computer, single spaced and complete on TWO SHEETS OF PAPER. Anything longer is too much.

There will be six entries, one for each website; each entry should feature (1) the title of the website, (2) the URL, and (3) a short 100-135 word synopsis of the content of website, what links are there (if any), and a short evaluation of the website — what you thought of the website as a whole.

Here is a sample response:

Aurora Online with Neil Postman “Stirring Up Trouble About Technology, Language and Education”
[http://aurora.icaap.org/index.php/aurora/article/view/62/74]

This website features an interview by Eugine Rubin with Neil Postman from 1989; it includes some biographical background information about Postman along with a photo. The interview goes on to explore Postman’s ideas on how television has contributed to the loss of childhood in America, Postman’s complaint about Sesame Street, and Postman’s ideas on how television has contributed to the decline of language. He connects the decline of language with the decrease in thinking, and an increase in stupidity. I found the content to be interesting; I especially like the idea that perhaps we shouldn’t focus on helping students become more intelligent, but instead, to help students become less stupid by “identifying and understanding various forms of stupidity and then working to eliminate as many of those as we could.” (130 words)

Now, you do that for these six websites:

Neil Postman Writings on the Web

Neil Postman Online

Online Forum: Neil Postman Ponders High Tech January 17, 1996

The intellectual, spiritual, hypnotic and philosophical world of Aldous Huxley

Brave New World? A Defence of Paradise-Engineering

Orwell Today


That’s it! Feel free to email me with questions, or bring your questions to your colleagues out here on the blog.