Visual+Literacy

So...what is visual literacy?
“Visual literacy is the ability to see, to understand, and ultimately to think, create, and communicate graphically. Generally speaking, the visually literate viewer looks at an image carefully, critically, and with an eye for the intentions of the image’s creator. Those skills can be applied equally to any type of image: photographs, paintings and drawings, graphic art (including everything from political cartoons to comic books to illustrations in children’s books), films, maps, and various kinds of charts and graphs. All convey information and ideas, and visual literacy allows the viewer to gather the information and ideas contained in an image, place them in context, and determine whether they are valid.” --Melissa Thibault and David Walbert, University of North Carolina (from Learn NC--UNC's School of Education)

Visual Literacy in the K-12 Classroom: Today's Mission
Now, how do we teach visual literacy in our classes? Visual literacy is more than just making use of graphic organizers. This page will provide a starting point for you, providing articles on teaching visual literacy, suggested lesson plans, popular web 2.0 tools, and sample work. To get our feet wet, I will introduce the basics of visual literacy and show a few project samples that involved students' careful attention to the "nonverbal" message. Then, you will work with a partner on a vocabulary activity that you can take back to your classroom.

//Sample Student Work://
 * Multimedia poetry project
 * Paper slide video

//Vocabulary Activity:// Your job is to teach a new vocabulary word to your classmates using the word in context--both verbally and graphically.

//Steps in the task://
 * 1) Explore a section of text in VocabGrabber and choose an unfamiliar word.
 * 2) Brainstorm uses of word in context using Mind Meister.
 * 3) Explore photos that capture the meaning of the word.
 * 4) Write a sentence using that word in context with the photo.
 * 5) Create a PowerPoint slide or a poster in Word. Color scheme and font should be carefully chosen to reflect the word's meaning and photo's message. (Lesson could be taken one step further to include audio in VoiceThread or OneTrueMedia. We're keeping things simple for our class today.)
 * 6) Grade your classmates according to the rubric.

Helpful Links
**Informative sites:**
 *  http://www.visual-literacy.org/periodic_table/periodic_table.html# (a periodic table of visualization methods)
 *  [] (A GREAT article introducing visual literacy; includes a link of related articles including great activities/lesson plans)

**Sites for photo searches:** NOTE: Contributors to most photo-sharing sites will allow others to use their work under Creative Commons Share-Alike licenses (2.0 or 3.0). You'll find details on the sites that will let you know whether or not you need to credit the photographer, artist, or contributor.
 * Flickr Commons
 * Wikimedia Commons
 * FreeFoto


 * Web 2.0 Tools:**
 * Wordle (Generate beautiful, meaningful word clouds.)
 * Visual Thesaurus-Vocab Grabber (Copy and paste text into a field and "grab" vocabulary that you can filter and sort into various lists. Great for independent student use and teacher-generated activities.)
 * www.boolify.org (a graphic organizer that helps young learners learn to conduct effective boolean searches online)
 * Mind Meister (concept mapping tool)
 * piclits.com (inspired picture writing)
 * Voicethread (Develop interactive slideshows with audio or textual narration; viewers can leave audio and textual comments as well!)
 * <span style="font-family: Helvetica,helvetica,sans-serif;">rubistar.4teachers.org (a free rubric generator tool)