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I love the way that Serendip evolves education into a new form. We do a lot of growing by comparing the different thoughts that we have in reaction to the same readings/discussion. I agree with Cassie and OrganizedKhaos, however, that we’re not taking full advantage of this medium because we don’t respond to each other online very often. Prof. Dalke puts it together as a discussion in class, but I think that I/we would benefit from doing this on our own by posting reactions to each other.  I’m making that one of my new resolutions!

The class discussions are quite fruitful, I love that we’re asked to think about a question and debate it with each other before our Professors add their comments. The struggle to make sense of a concept and find my own story prior to hearing from someone who has devoted more time and developed more insight into these topics gives me an opportunity to compare and contrast, see if I’m missing anything, see where I may disagree and see where I could improve my thought process. I’ve also learned the importance of examples. Resolution #2: I need to work on that step of the process. Sometimes I think something without fully knowing why. Being able to produce an example would help to solidify the idea both in my head and explain where I’m coming from to my classmates.

One other comment about the class discussions, I’d love to see more people get involved. I’m not sure how to affect that, but maybe if we view our comments as “play” and just throw our thoughts out there for discussion and encourage each other’s ideas, maybe people would feel more comfortable in getting involved?

I really enjoy what I’ve learned and will continue to strive to learn about writing. (The ability to choose my own topic for the papers is very helpful in this regard because it increases my motivation to fully explore the topic.) It’s fun to absorb myself in my thesis/question and try to make sense of it as I go through the research and writing process. I was grateful to be able to discuss some points that arose while writing my first paper with Prof. Grobstein; and do a postmortem (not literally, webpapers never die) writing discussion with Prof. Dalke. The ideas that they introduced propelled me to some places that I couldn’t have reached on my own (I’ve added a new wing to my personal library of babel).

Finally, I watched Inherit the Wind last night and found it to be a much richer experience because of this course. Since taking this class, I feel that the creationists depicted in the movie aren’t “wrong” because of what they believe, they are closed-minded because they don’t think about why they believe something. This class asks us to explore why we believe what we do and allows us to add more depth to our life experiences through reflection, useful consideration, allowing for other points of view (stories) and embracing change. I think this movie should be added to the curriculum to see how we think about it before and after we take the class.   I feel like my altered reaction is a dramatic example of the metamorphosis that I (we’ve) gone through. 

*Photo Credit: yhsbiology.wikispaces.com