Graphic Responses

For this week's reading blog, I'll be taking a look at the article written by W.J. Broz.

Broz talks about the value of having students do a graphic response supported by a rationale rather than simply writing a tradition paper.

He writes, "The effort this deer-hunter student put into his graphic response is one of the phenomena I have continued to observe: students at all levels of ability will put great effort into graphic interpretations."  It really is suprising how much more willing a student is to put effort into a visual response rather than a written response.  I have no clue what it is about graphic responses that make students do this, but either way it's true.  I remember spending absurd amounts of time in high school on what could have easily been quick projects.  Instead, for some strange reason, I felt that it was necessary to put a ton of effort into things. I really don't know why . . . any ideas why we do this?

 

There's another component to the value of graphic responses.  Broz writes, "With graphic responses, however, I have found that students cannot easily be 'too general.'"  I never really had a big problem with being too general, but I know many, many people who do have this problem. Like Broz says, doing a graphic response can help alleviate the problem.  It's hard to make a quality paper by being general, but it's even harder to make a quality graphic response by being general.