Week 2

Week 2 of this course came with lessons of understanding. This past week I feel we learned how to, through our own exploration, deeply understand text and what it has to offer. Using the reflection part of our note books, we took a brief moment to think on ideas we'd covered through the week. Giving just a short blurb of what you thought helped solidify our learning. With both the AoW and the PoW we learned that through close reads and explication we could seek deeper understanding and begin to ask questions that would (hopefully) provide us with thought provoking answers. We shared some of our ideas with the class in small groups and as a whole, which I liked. This, for me, kept last weeks idea of communication at the forefront. Through communicating ideas that we've gathered with close reads, I think our ideas were more focused and had more gravity to them. By continuing the exercise of close reads on our own with "Reading the Story" we were able to have lively class discussion on what distinguishes literature from commercial fiction. I feel that our class came to the conclusion that literature vs. commercial fiction is a spectrum, not a line in the sand. This topic sparked a prime example of a focused, weighted, and engaging classroom dialogue . If you define it using black and white terms, I feel that strips it of the ability to be art. Art requires interpretation was a discussion point that really helped me grasp the difference in Lit vs. CF. Taking the idea of a spectrum definition, we read two short stories and decided on our own what elements of commercial fiction and literature were present. I was absent Friday, so I'll have many questions on my reading come Monday. A personal goal of mine is to always remain an active participant in class, and I feel I've done that this week. I do wonder if there is a better way to explicate text, and hope those answer will come in the next few weeks.

I found the video below and used it to really validate the ideas we learned in class. I like this video because as the instructor is speaking, ideas are scrolling along the bottom. This engages both the sights and hearing, making it a great learning tool.