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