Colleen E. KennedyDuring the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, one of the most important tools of a reader or writer was a commonplace book (CPB). Peter Beal, leading expert on English manuscript studies, defines a commonplace book as “a manuscript book in which quotations or passages from reading matter, precepts, proverbs and aphorisms, useful rhetorical figures or exemplary phrasing, words and ideas, or other notes and memoranda are entered for ready reference under general subject headings.” Your sources can include, first and foremost, the assigned readings and supplementary materials, as well as any other useful texts you come across. I encourage you to supplement CPB entries with extra-curricular material: quotations from readings for other classes, lyrics from songs, lines from movies, tweets with relevant hashtags, an occasional quotation from a classmate during discussion, etc. These extra-curricular commonplace passages, however, are in addition to and not in place of the required passages as described below.
I love this outline/syllabus for creating a commonplace book (as a potential replacement for a term paper).
I’d be curious to see those who are using Hypothes.is as a social annotation tool in coursework utilize this outline (or similar ones) in combination with their annotation practices.
Curating one’s annotations and placing them into a commonplace book or zettelkasten would be a fantastic rhetorical exercise to extend the value of one’s notes and ideas.
I love this outline/syllabus for creating a commonplace book (as a potential replacement for a term paper).
I’d be curious to see those who are using Hypothes.is as a social annotation tool in coursework utilize this outline (or similar ones) in combination with their annotation practices.
Curating one’s annotations and placing them into a commonplace book or zettelkasten would be a fantastic rhetorical exercise to extend the value of one’s notes and ideas.
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… @ChrisAldrich Have you read Montaigne? Regarding:
I love this outline/syllabus for creating a commonplace book (as a potential replacement for a term paper). I’d be curious to see those who are using Hypothes.is as a social … boffosocko.com/2021/08/31/557…
JR writes about some of his journey into blogging. I appreciate some of the last part about the 9x9x25 blogs. For JR it seems like some smaller prompts got him into more regular writing.
He mentions Stephen Downes‘ regular workflow as well. I think mine is fairly similar to Stephen’s. To some extent, I write much more on my own website now than I ever had before. This is because I post a lot more frequently to my own site, in part because it’s just so easy to do. I’ll bookmark things or post about what I’ve recently read or watched. My short commentary on some of these is just that—short commentary. But occasionally I discover, depending on the subject, that those short notes and bookmark posts will spring into something bigger or larger. Sometimes it’s a handful of small posts over a few days or weeks that ultimately inspires the longer thing. The key seems to be to write something.
Perhaps a snowball analogy will work? I take a tiny snowball of words and give it a proverbial roll. Sometimes it sits there and other times it rolls down the hill and turns into a much larger snowball. Other times I get a group of them and build a full snowman.
Of course lately a lot of my writing starts, like this did, as an annotation (using Hypothes.is) to something I was reading. It then posts to my website with some context and we’re off to the races.
It’s just this sort of workflow that I was considering when I recently suggested that those using annotation as a classroom social annotation tool, might also consider using it to help students create commonplace books to help students spur their writing. The key is to create small/low initial stakes that have the potential to build up into something bigger. Something akin to the user interface of Twitter (and their tweetstorm functionality). Write a short sentence or two on which you can hit publish, but if the mood strikes, then write another, and another until you’ve eventually gotten to something that could be a blog post (or article). Of course if you do this, you should own it.
This is also the sort of perspective which Sönke Ahrens takes in his excellent book How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking – for Students, Academics and Nonfiction Book Writers, though there he’s prescribing something for general note taking when I might suggest it’s a prescription for a pedagogy behind living and writing.
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Have you seen what @readwiseio are working on? It could interest you. readwise.io/read
Chris Aldrich points to this syllabus for creating a commonplace book.
At the art academy our art history teacher made us keep a journal for notes on things seen, done, experienced and to reflect on them. Making a start with formulating an opinion, taking a position. Felt awkward at first but turned out to be a very valuable exercise.
Today there’s a vibrant niche of digital note taking tools that want to help in creating connected notes. Chris again, with a good overview of what’s happening in this space.
All of which can help with getting a grip on your personal knowledge mastery (pkm).
What I’m interested in is doing this with visual artefacts as source material. What does visual pkm look like? Journaling, scrapbooking, collecting and the like. The most obvious tool is the sketchbook. How does a sketchbook work?
Atlas by Gerhard Richter
Daily diary for noticing the world around you by Lynda Barry
OMA book machine
Thinking through Drawing
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#bildung #creativejournal
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Roy Scholten
It builds on many of these traditions, but there is a rather sizeable movement in the physical world as well as lots online of sketchnotes which might fit the bill for you Roy.
The canonical book/textbook for the space seems to be The Sketchnote Handbook: the illustrated guide to visual note taking by Mike Rohde.
For a solid overview of the idea in about 30 minutes, I found this to be a useful video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evLCAYlx4Kw
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Thanks, I’m aware of sketchnoting and it never really worked for me. It often seems to become decorative to a point where I’m not sure it supports understanding anymore. I think it’s primarily a technique for capturing others’ ideas. When I draw when listening to a talk it’s more for attention and concentration, i.e. this digital collage of scanned fountain pen drawings: https://i.snap.as/xaP7NecI.png.
To me Lynda Barry’s work is more interesting in that it’s about visually developing your own awareness, perception, ideas and stories.
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