February 05

Drucker
Drucker is a long piece, and often boring, but he's making some pretty crucial (if sweeping) points about an important social transformation, from farmers to blue collar workers to knowledge workers. I won't summarize Drucker here, because I want us to engage him in our discussion directly, but I will point out some of the central issues I think we need to get at in Drucker:

• What is the knowledge society?
• What is a knowledge worker?
• What is the role of education and learning for knowledge workers?
• Why do they have to work in teams? Why do they have to be connected to organizations?
• Why are they mobile, and what is the social consequence of this mobility?
• What is social sector?
• Why is the social sector necessary?
• What is the public sector? the private sector?

These aren't all the issues, but they do seem to be some of the most important ones. As part of the flex time arrangement, I won't require people to make this or that many posts about Drucker, but understand that the more we discuss this essay, the better you will do on the paper.

Introduction to Connections
We've already had some introduction to the concept of project; now it's time for us to think about connections. Connections are what show your critical thinking (the goal of this class) because they demonstrate your ability to bring disparate concepts or pieces of information into relation. What's more, they prove your project, acting as evidence for what you want to pursue about the texts and issue at hand.

For now, let's start with a very basic and formulaic sense of a connection. Think of this as the gross anatomy of a basic connection. This formula is NOT what all your connections should look like, but it gives you a start by providing a structure you can climb onto (and then off of). Take a look at the formula (link will open in new browser window). There are a couple of things to notice here: for one, a connection involves quotations from both texts. After all, you wouldn't be connecting if you were only dealing with one essay; for another, notice that what's really important is the last part of the formula, where you explain the connection you see.

We're going to develop this understanding of connection as we go on through the semester, just as we will develop our understanding of project. For now, though, I'll be posting some quotations from Drucker in the forum that seem like good starts towards connection with Pollan (see "Tue, Feb 05: practicing connections". If you'd like, use one of these quotations, find a quotation from Pollan, use the forumla to assemble it into a paragraph, and post it in the forum. I, and everyone else, will comment on the paragraph.

Next Assignment
Finally, to give you a jump start and to give you a sense of what kinds of discussion will be most useful, I am posting the assignment for Paper Two.

What Needs to Be Done
In the next week, we need to work in the forum to flesh out an understanding of Drucker as well as a basic understanding of how to make connections. Also, I will need your papers by Friday morning at the latest. Final papers should be sent to me at barriosb@rci.rutgers.edu (if done by Thurs at 2:30) or barrios@optonline.com (if sent after that). Please send papers as attachments, in RTF or Microsoft Word format. As part of that, please also "sign" the student permission form by reading the form and then stating in your email with the final paper what kind of permission you'd like to give.