The reading for this class was my absolute favorite part. My advice to future students would be to do the readings any time you come across some free time. I would personally take my iPad to work, wait for some down time, and would knock out some of the reading. I would then save the writing for later while going back over the stories I had read. I would advise getting ahead on the readings so that there is more time to find a plot that you like, then begin brainstorming for the Storytelling assignment.
In the beginning of the course the reading diary was the hardest assignment for me. My first post was me basically rewording the plot. This was way too time consuming and took away from what the assignment was truly about. Towards the end I would pick a few stories that really stood out to me, then wrote my reactions over what was occurring in the text. Being able to go back and see how the readings affected my emotions gave me an idea on how I want my own stories to affect readers.
Regarding the UnTextbook, I that it is an amazing piece of work so far. I can only imagine what it will become in the future! The notes within the text were the biggest factor for me during the semester. Since we are jumping from section to section each week, the brief introduction helps smooth out some bumps in the road we may encounter while reading over different cultures. I am no expert so there were many times I would be reading a section, not fully understand what the text was getting at, and the notes cleared any questions I had! I think the idea of creating an "anthology" of different themes is a great idea. This would allow students to create themes in their writings, and this could possibly help them with their semester long project.
