Sunday, March 28, 2010

Class Notes

TPB1988's summary

We opened with the introduction of aseidman's friend Dave Joria, who writes comics as part of the group Tangent Artists.

We looked at an image from the Dream Suite; Anne thought it was interesting to see visuals generating other visuals.

Anne also brought up Restless—it's based on data on diversity issues at BMC, and featured a professor character who had a second-self subconscious/private self/“electric subconscious”.

I think Persepolis may be the first thing I've really, really enjoyed reading in a while; I read it all in one shot.  I really liked the simplicity of the style and never found myself reading the words instead of looking at the pictures, even though I am drawn to words like many of the people in our class.  A Game of You made me realize that reading graphic novels may not always be a quick process, but even though Persepolis is a lot thicker, I think I got through it more quickly.  There seemed to be less text on each page. 

“Yet such a definition may perhaps be reached by considering the points of difference between reality and its opposite, fiction. A figment is a product of somebody's imagination; it has such characters as his thought impresses upon it. That those characters are independent of how you or I think is an external reality. There are, however, phenomena within our own minds, dependent upon our thought, which are at the same time real in the sense that we really think them. But though their characters depend on how we think, they do not depend on what we think those characters to be.

Married to the Sea (the website where this comic is from) is a web comic that I look at daily.  It's not a typical comic in that it doesn't follow a story line--every day there's just a different drawing with words, and the one for today reminded me of what we've been doing in class lately.

TOPIC: Technology in Education

SUGGESTED READING:
“Tapscott on Changing Pedagogy for the Net Generation” and the executive summary of the draft National Educational Technology Plan.

Snacks will be served in Campus Center 200 from 2:30-4pm.

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

Today's class began with a Kim Nortrop picture and our usual course keeping. The class discussed the recent paper topics which ranged form liquid connection to adaptations of Alice. Anne was surprised at how well the papers were written considering the lack of conferences and although she tried a new method of commenting on the papers she said she will probably not do that format again.

A broad question, but important, I think for what we are looking at. I guess I started thinking (too much?) about Anne Dalke's question to me: did I have any expectations/answers of my own for how to read graphic novels? I think I need to change my no to a yes, or at least a hesitant yes with a very vague answer.

I was really delighted today to learn so much about graphic novels, especially the actual process, and how close they really come to movies. Also, the debate of whether pictures are 'received' more than 'perceived' --part of me wants to read the Scott McCloud books Right Now and Understand What He Means, but that probably won't happen immediately, so... instead, I am excited for the debate to continue in class.