Dirty Little Secrets

I remember a couple of years ago, cheering when I read that MIT would be opening up their courseware to the public for free. This morning, I hit the StumbleUpon button and MIT’s OpenCourseWare | Writing and Humanistic Studies | Theory and Practice of Non-linear and Interactive Narrative, Spring 2003 “Readings” appeared, which, as it turns out, is a list of resources for hypertext and other kinds of fiction. I think what I find refreshing here are the descriptions for each link… they aren’t stuffy academic offerings. It’s been so long since I was a part of the academic world, that I find it rather refreshing to vicariously “return to college.” In particular, take a look at Hamlet on the Holodeck by Janet Murray.

I think I should also say that I absolutely loved my college English Composition classes, and if I had the financial support to do so, I would take many more of those courses. Would probably have to do so via a distance learning project of some kind, since the nearest university is 55 miles away. On the other hand, I have the Web at home, and sites like this and Gutenberg and all of the other text repositories online give people like me plenty of resources. Still, I miss the interaction of other writers, students, and faculty.