Wysock-it to Me!

Wysocki – I generally liked this reading. As I said in class, I enjoyed the piece where Wysocki mentions how text is read differently depending on how it is presented, formatted, what the reader approaches the text expecting, predicting, etc. I actually tried to picture the text as scrolling up a computer screen, held within an AIM box. After our class discussion, I went back to the text and read some parts while trying to picture it as being laid out in an issue of Teen Vogue. You know, pink flashy letters at the top that say "NEW MEDIA" with a scribbly teal-colored question in the margin asking, "Is linear text really all that fair?"
Doing that seemed kind of joke-y to me, but really it calls to mind the supposed authority of the text. With that, I thought about visuals within a text. Wysocki asks us to think about the use of visuals within academic texts and how that makes readers value or devalue visual information in the context of text. For me, I feel that visuals are devalued in those situations. On one hand, when I turn a page of my textbook and I see a picture, the first thing my eye catches is that picture and I'll even read the caption underneath it before reading the lengthier text. It really doesn't matter what that picture is…in all of my education textbooks there are usually pictures of child reading a book while holding a pencil and looking contemplative. What does that do? Most of the time, the caption underneath is of some statistic of student performance or government policy. It rarely has anything to do with the child in the photo. That's the other-hand point I was trying to get to…kind of went off there (sorry.) Do these textbook companies have stock photographs of children thinking, smiling, frowning, playing, singing, and raising their hands? It seems that they must. That, to me, devalues the visual. Moving on to the Selfe chapter, I would have liked to have seen a visual for the story of David. Maybe not David's photo but perhaps his school, his university, an example of a webpage he created? That would have been a useful visual in that it would have helped me interpret the narrative while I was reading it.
Selfe – Okay, I get what she was saying. If we don't embrace new forms of literacy, then we are setting students up for failure by not recognizing their talents with new media…right? Maybe my paraphrasing is wrong, but I think I get it. I definitely agree. I think there should be a partnership between composition and new media. Use both to help each other, rather than one helping the other.
I had a problem with how Selfe presented the story about David. While I liked the interview format, I did not understand what the purpose was with including all of the "ums" and "uhhs." Maybe I thought about this more than I needed to, but I was thinking about reading an interview in Rolling Stone magazine as compared to David's interview. Is Selfe implying that in all other interviews in publication, David is the only interviewee who sometimes stammered with words during the conversation? I don't believe it. I guarantee that Alice Cooper has dropped an "um" or two in an interview before. (I didn't just pick Cooper arbitrarily…I really think he's quite eloquent.) I just don't understand Selfe's purpose, if she had any purpose at all. Was it supposed to drive the point home that David wasn't so good at using language to communicate? Okay, whew. I'm done with ranting about that. I really liked Selfe's mention of postmodernism as it applies to new media and the creation of personal identity. I think what she says is important because it certainly embraces things like social identity and digital community. Are these necessarily good things? I don't think I can answer that but it is wise for Selfe to be recognizing these things as potential tools for literacy and composition. Selfe is right, too, in pointing out that David is active and respected in an online community. He seems to be a leader in that field. That's important because that is where a lot of business is conducted now. More and more people get their information from an online source. So, good for David.

I heard the song "Freeze Frame" by the J. Geils Band on the radio yesterday. I was really sad to discover that it really is not as mind-blowingly good as I thought it was when I was little. Is getting older supposed to be like that? I'm bummed out.