Visual Literacy
21st Century Students
• Average teen watches 22,000 hours TV by 12th grade
• Vocab of 14 year olds dropped from 25,000 in 1950 to 10,000 in 1999
• 1 in 4 2-year olds have a TV in their bedroom
• By age 21 kids will have spent 10,000 hours on video games, gotten 200,000 emails and spent 10,000 hours on cell phones. They will have read 5,000 hours.
Tipping Point (2009)
• 45 million households have a HD TV
• 52% own digital cameras
• 280+ million camera phones have been sold
• 12.3 million households listen to pod casts
• Top internet sites involve social networking
• Internet access is in 75% of homes
Students who are visually literate:
• Have knowledge of visuals produced through electronic media
• Understand elements of visual design, technique, media
• Are aware of the emotional, psychological elements of visuals
• Comprehend abstract and symbolic imagery
• Are informed viewers, critics and consumers
What is Visual Literacy?
• Process of sending and receiving messages using images
• Ability to construct meaning from visual images
• Intermediality—combined literacies needed to read in a multi-media world
Visual Literacy involves:
• Ability to interpret content of visual images
• Examine social impact of those images
• Discuss purpose, audience and ownership
• Ability to visualize internally
• Communicate visually
• Read and interpret visual images
• Be aware of making judgments of accuracy, validity and worth of images
Visual Literacy comes from:
• Visual Arts• Art history• Aesthetics• Linguistics• Literacy• Philosophy• Perceptual Physiology• Sociology• Cultural Studies• Media Studies• Instructional Design• Semiotics• Communications Studies• Educational Technology
One possible course
• Identify learning styles
• Comprehend the meaning of visual literacy as information
• Create graphic representations of data, information, knowledge and wisdom
• Use a digital camera, iMovie or equivalent and multimedia software
• Provide classmates with constructive online feedback
Issues
• What issues are being shown in the image?
• How is the way the image is being portrayed different from the real world?
• What might this image mean to someone else?
• What is the message of the image?
Information
• Where did the information come from?
• What was included? What left out?
• What proportion could be inaccurate?
• What information is factual vs. manipulated?
• What is the relationship between the image and text?
• What impact does size have?
Who
• What people are depicted?
• Whose culture is represented?
• Who created the image? For what purpose?
• Who is the intended audience?
• Whose point of view does the image take?
Persuasion
• Why was this media chosen?
• Why was a particular image chosen?
• Why is the image arranged this way?
• Is the information factual?
• What devices have been used to get the message across?
• How has the message been affected by what was left out?
Assumptions
• What attitudes are assumed?
• Whose voice is heard?
• Whose voice is not heard?
• What experiences or points of view are assumed?
Conclusion
• Visual literacy is already prevalent in our culture.
• Visual literacy is an essential rhetorical tool.
• Multi-media, multi-modal compositions are supplanting traditional modes of writing such as essays.
• Visual literacy is the way of the future.
Additional resources
• International Visual Literacy Association: http://www.ivla.org/
• University of North Carolina K-12 Visual Literacy: http://www.learnnc.org/lp/pages/675
• Picture This: Visual Literacy Activities, Oakland Museum of California: http://museumca.org/picturethis/visual.html
• Journal of Visual Literacy: http://www.ohio.edu/visualliteracy/
• Visual Literacy and the Classroom: http://www.newhorizons.org/strategies/literacy/riesland.htm
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