Class Notes for Tuesday 12-7-10

We begun today talking about our final performance groups and our professor asked what it was we wanted to eat that day for class. Let me just say that our choices were wild! (i.e. chocolate and vanilla). A burst of laughter filled the room of course and then we begun class discussion. We started off the discussion by asking yet about other ways we could go about "changing education paradigms".

One person in the class went in a more collaborative direction, and proposed that a good way to share ideas with one another was maybe using serendip as a way to compile different perspectives from different courses available on serendip. This process was called "serendipping". Using this process we could collaborate with people outside of the bi-co circle, while at the same time still collaborating within the bi-co.

Then our professor gave examples of other ways to captivate while educating one's audience in the classroom or outside of the classroom. Many of these examples were media driven some were videos and some were mostly images, but they were organized in a way that wasn't conventional.

Then we jumped into discussing the use-value of studying non-fictional prose. Some argued that it was still useful because it still help us "make meaningful human relationships". This thought was furthered by a couple of classmates who argued that non-fiction was still important because it helped us see the intent of the writer and in essence the writer's experience and agenda.

But others who were really just sick of this binary that is non-fiction and fiction didn't really focus too much on the author's intent but rather the actual product she or he created. One person argued that the construction was not the point, but rather what they were saying.

Then others said that it reminded them about how it is that genre is very limiting. How genre is all about the construction of a piece of prose, yet it doesn't always describe the product perfectly.

Here is where we started talking about the Binary of Theory and Story. We used one book in particular that we had already been looking at which was The Call of Stories by Robert Coles to ponder it's use of the binary of theory and stories, and the binary of non-fiction and fiction.

Some argued that the binary of stories and theories is non-existent but because we as humans still tend to want to categorize we open up a spectrum to fit what doesn't fit into it.

One person argued that theories and stories are one in the same. That a theory is story or that a story is a theory.

I think another person agreed when she said: "Stories are like theories, because if it doesn't fit you can try another one."

Another person argued that stories and theories were different, but that you couldn't have one without the other.  That in every story there is a theory and vice-versa. (I think I agree with this.)

One person argued that theories were more like convergent thinking and stories were more like divergent in that theories were individual stories that could remind one of things and help them find answers for themselves and theories just kept one contained to one form of answering a question.

I think:

we ended class having landed our plane (or bird) in different place at different times. But I think we did land, and I think we are going to fly again and again for an eternity, because even if we fly to ever place throughout a certain amount of days, that place you just visited last night my have changed by now.

PS. I was not a automatic robot taking notes (although I wish I was), so these notes are not full and complete, but I hope they tell you a story of our thoughts and involvement with non-fictional prose.