Literary Kinds course

“The axis of reality runs solely through the egotistic places,- they are strung upon it like so many beads.”  William James

 In class today we briefly discussed the forms that comics can take (and webcomics because they are not limited to print). Dave quoted Scott Mccloud, so I think it would be appropriate to "quote" him first on time and form in comics:

Then on time and form in web comics: I Can't Stop Thinking! #4

OK, I have to confess that the two classes I taking with Anne Dalke are starting to blur together.  The content is transgenre, there is lots of analysis of images, and extensive use of Serendip.  The greatest difference between literary kinds and the house of wits is how we use Serendip to record our thoughts.  Our group forums place every student’s thoughts in the context of the class discussion.  Comments are commented upon, linked to, possibly even quoted in papers.  In the other course, a student’s thoughts are placed in a single page, a bit of a blog.  (click here to view my commonplace book)  This makes it much easier to trace the development of a student’s ideas.  Such a feature

Our conversation-beginning today about Alice as a "very sensible 7-yr-old, @ stage of development/education where the world appears completely explainable and unambiguous" reminded me strongly of the recent film adaptation of Where the Wild Things Are.

The openness and encouragement of exploration and conversation that exists in our classroom and online are, to me, this class's distinguishing characteristics. I (as is evident from how late this post is) have some growing still to do to take full advantage of this, but it's a fantastic environment that makes it possible for this growth to take place. I feel like this class is very well suited to thinking/working instead of formula-memorization (for writing and thinking). The class format is also pushing me to learn from others in the class as much as I learn from the material we study, which is a new idea in my education and seems pretty wonderful.