Bernhardt IWA

Pre-reading Exericise

     I chose to look at an article from cnn.com about the Chigaco teacher's strike.

Before the article, there is a brief slideshow featuring various teachers explaining why they teach. The rest of the article doesn't include any other images, but it is segmented into different sections with headings. Moreover, on the upper lefthand side, there is a little box featuring "story highlights," which essentially summarizes the article. It seems very reader friendly.

Summary
      In his article "Seeing the text," Stephen A. Bernhardt argues that teachers should encourage students to experiment with texts that include more visual elements. Bernhardt looks at an example of a visually interesting text to explain how its format can be more reader friendly than the traditional essay format of unbroken text. He argues that by making it easier to read, a text can then become more accessible to a larger audience.
      Bernhardt's "Seeing the text" is similar to Scott McCloud's "The Vocabulary of Comics" in that it deals with the benefits visuals or images have on an audience. McCloud argued that written text in his piece would not be as effective as the images/cartoons that he included. Bernhardt is making a similar case in favor of including more visual designs or graphics in texts.
     Bernhardt's piece can also be compared to Porter's article about intertextuality. Porter argued that while an author may be confined to certain formatting standards expected of his/her discourse community, within those confinements, he/she also has various freedoms. Bernhardt does not seem as interested in appealing to a particular discourse community; instead, he applauds a text's ability to reach a wider audience. Apart from headings, the discourse community our students are writing for does not really encourage visual design; perhaps including a more reader-friendly visual design can be an avenue of freedom that Porter talks about; however, if the discourse community finds such visuals unacceptable, can our students really feel comfortable exploring this creative path?

QD
1. I do struggle more with reading dense text rather than a text with a lot of vials, as I think anyone would. However, I am used to it. It's what I've read for the majority of my undergrad and it's how I've been taught to write. I can see the benefits of giving our students more reader friendly pieces, because this is an "alien discourse" to them, but I have no problem with the way things are written. There are certain expectations, as noted by Porter, of the discourse community. If you try to challenge conventional format, your piece may be considered unacceptable; it may be best not to risk it.
2. I'm just beginning to become comfortable with the use of partitions and headings in academic papers. I realized that I would not have my kids avoid them if it helps them with their organization, even though I myself have never used headings and subheadings in a paper. I think it can benefit both the reader and writer. On the other hand, I don't really see why a text needs headings in order to be understood.

AE
1. Even outside of English classes, I can't recall using visuals in any of my college papers. In one class, we used the blogs on blackboard, and we were required to include an image or video as part of the assignment. I guess this is a combination of text and visual that Bernhardt describes. I'm in favor of more visuals in texts because I think it helps students understand the content better, but for my purposes as a grad student, I just don't see the place for visuals.
4. I visit Jezebel.com pretty frequently. There is sort of like a blog scroll on the right side of the screen that says the title of an article, and it is accompanied by some sort of visual. I choose which article I'd like to read first by what the headline says, and then what picture accompanies it. Rarely do I ever click on an article based on the image, but I'm sure it has happened at some point.

Thoughts
      I thought this was an interesting article, especially in relation to the McCloud and Porter essay. Maybe it will be interesting to see if students take this piece and the Porter piece as a way of telling them that they can be creative and more original if they include a more visual structure in their essay. I'd certainly be in favor of reading that sort of work. For my own work, I am thinking about including some sort of visual representation in a piece. A lot of the TAs are taking Introduction to English Studies, in which we're learning about MLA format, a very rigid system. It just seems so incongruous to read articles encouraging this type of exploration while taking traditional English classes where the standards of the discourse community are taught to us.