The central questions asked in our class reading are: “What should you ask of your professors?” and “What should your professors ask of you?”
Please answer these questions in consideration of the author's ideas:
“Learning takes place through discovery, not when you’re told something but when you figure it out for yourself.”
“Great teachers don’t teach. They help students learn. Students teach themselves. Three of the all-time greats—Socrates, Jesus, and his Jewish contemporary the sage Hillel—share a dislike of heavyweight speeches. They spoke briefly, painting pictures, and telling tales (“parables”), and always raised more questions than they settled.”
If the whole is equal to the sum of its parts than our "whole" cannot be reached until our parts are gathered and acknowledged. This blog will act as a collection, a gallery that records our “parts and particles” (our particulars) in an effort to connect the dots; to endlessly connect the dots.
Monday, June 14, 2010
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
welcome to bridge 2010
You ask me to connect the dots. You ask whether I remember the “old childhood drawings” where you connected the dots until a figure appeared. I remember connecting the dots; I remember the dragon that appeared, the angel that appeared. A winged horse once, a small wooden house. I remember sitting on the floor in a house, connecting the dots of a wooden house....I've been thinking about the dots.
Michael Palmer (from A Danish Notebook)
What if we joined the debris or loose pieces of our personal narratives, interior thinking, and questions to develop something that gathers all of our “personals” into a collective? Would this make a contemporary narrative?
The purpose of this blog will be to generate writing that exposes our individual stories, our contemporary moment (shared/collective stories), our reading interpretations / reflections, and our writing as a whole project. This project is an experiment; the goals of the experiment are to write more often and to learn from each other.
BLOG WORK: We will have a classroom conversation and handout that will itemize blog responsibilities and expectations. In the response section of this post (comments) please comment on what you want from the blog, what you don't want from the blog, and what concerns or questions you have regarding classroom blog use.
HW: For homework tonight, draw a "connect the dots" that can act as a self portrait for you. It need not be a literal self portrait but it should reveal something about you. Photograph or scan the connect the dot into the computer so you can upload it to the blog. (Please ask Jeff and I if you are having a hard time with this "technical" part of the blog).
Then, compose a one-two page essay that clarifies and examines HOW this is a self portrait.
What do you need to include? The first paragraph should approach a definition of self portrait--this should be your own interpretation of portraiture and may or may not glean from definitions elsewhere. At the end of the first paragraph, introduce your own portrait (a title might help). Then, proceed to DESCRIBE the portrait (materials used, process employed, visual appearance, personal resonance, etc.). Describe in details and employ sensory descriptions. Because DESCRIPTION SHOULD NATURALLY LEAD TO ANALYSIS, work to analyze the work for what it reveals about you, how you reflect on it, and what the work means.
You could consider other self portraits you admire and develop a lineage between your portrait and your idea of portraiture; you could discuss the difficulty of portraiture (or the value); you could reflect on portraiture in our contemporary, digital moment; and you could develop a conversation about knowing the self / discovering the self / inventing the self / etc.
Michael Palmer (from A Danish Notebook)
What if we joined the debris or loose pieces of our personal narratives, interior thinking, and questions to develop something that gathers all of our “personals” into a collective? Would this make a contemporary narrative?
The purpose of this blog will be to generate writing that exposes our individual stories, our contemporary moment (shared/collective stories), our reading interpretations / reflections, and our writing as a whole project. This project is an experiment; the goals of the experiment are to write more often and to learn from each other.
BLOG WORK: We will have a classroom conversation and handout that will itemize blog responsibilities and expectations. In the response section of this post (comments) please comment on what you want from the blog, what you don't want from the blog, and what concerns or questions you have regarding classroom blog use.
HW: For homework tonight, draw a "connect the dots" that can act as a self portrait for you. It need not be a literal self portrait but it should reveal something about you. Photograph or scan the connect the dot into the computer so you can upload it to the blog. (Please ask Jeff and I if you are having a hard time with this "technical" part of the blog).
Then, compose a one-two page essay that clarifies and examines HOW this is a self portrait.
What do you need to include? The first paragraph should approach a definition of self portrait--this should be your own interpretation of portraiture and may or may not glean from definitions elsewhere. At the end of the first paragraph, introduce your own portrait (a title might help). Then, proceed to DESCRIBE the portrait (materials used, process employed, visual appearance, personal resonance, etc.). Describe in details and employ sensory descriptions. Because DESCRIPTION SHOULD NATURALLY LEAD TO ANALYSIS, work to analyze the work for what it reveals about you, how you reflect on it, and what the work means.
You could consider other self portraits you admire and develop a lineage between your portrait and your idea of portraiture; you could discuss the difficulty of portraiture (or the value); you could reflect on portraiture in our contemporary, digital moment; and you could develop a conversation about knowing the self / discovering the self / inventing the self / etc.
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