mccloud reading (large; sorry)

Excellent post!

This reading made me think much more about what we're not telling our students.

In comics, the gaps are filled in by the reader, but their interpretation of those gaps can be guided visually. You accomplished this beautifully in this post. In reading your post, my expectation was that your interaction with McCloud took about a minute or two. Looking at the hands of his clock, showed me that no time passed. I love it!

Our traditional course models are not visual, so students fill in gaps on their own, often with different outcomes. Can we incorporate a visual model in course design that will give a better illustration of the gaps in what we're teaching?

Why don't we use more comics?

Very cool. We can learn a great deal about visuals in instruction from this space.

Thanks.
I should clarify that this features some of Scott McCloud's work, just in case anyone misses the nature of the post. It's a reaction to the NMR reading featuring a chapter of McCloud's book, Understanding Comics. I took the first page from McCloud's chapter "Time Frames" and inserted a two page encounter between Scott and I. The scanned page of Scott's work remains in it's xeroxed and scanned gray tonalities.

Sorry I missed the discussion on this one! Elizabeth Pyatt also has some good insights at

http://www.personal.psu.edu/ejp10/blogs/tlt/2010/12/new-media-seminar-week-final-c.html

I have to add that there is an affective component to comics - good one suck you in, despite the subject. Good games do this as well. I believe this is exactly what's missing from most instructional activities, and why I find comics so fascinating in relation to instructional design.