Visual Literacy
21st Century Students • Average teen watches 22,000 hours TV by 12th grade • Vocabulary of 14 year olds dropped from 25,000 in 1950 to 10,000 in 1999 • 1 in 4 two-year olds has 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
"All of us are watchers - of television, of time clocks, of traffic on the freeway - but few of us are observers. Everyone is looking, not many are seeing." - Peter M. Leschak
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 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E91fk6D0nwM TEDx Dartmouth talk: Brian Kennedy, Director, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College
“Visual literacy is the ability to construct meaning from images. It’s not a skill. It uses skills as a toolbox. It’s a form of critical thinking that enhances your intellectual capacity.” –Brian Kennedy
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
Applying Visual Literacy • 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/ • Visual Literacy: An E-Learning Tutorial on Visualization for Communication, Engineering and Business: http://www.visual-literacy.org/ • A Periodic Table of Visualization Methods: http://www.visual-literacy.org/periodic_table/periodic_table.html • 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
Group Activity • Discuss your responses to the presentation on visual literacy, including Brian Kennedy’s TED talk. • Brainstorm ways visual literacy can be incorporated into a high school technical writing course. • Create specific activities and assignments you could use in your classroom to engage students in visual literacy.
