Lesson 5: Visual Literacy

Visual literacy is a very powerful ability students develop over time and many already are proficient in that can enhance student learning of content knowledge.  Nearly all humans can see and that sense is the most dominant of all the senses.  This week I learned that visual literacy is something that all students should be utilizing in their learning because they take the images and process them in their mind to understand the meaning of it.  We watched a video from Martin Scorsese and he discussed about the lack of finances a middle class family had to go to formal entertainment such as theatre, but he was a regular at the movies and he looked deeper than what was just on the screen.  He looked into what made the scene and how it dictates what the audience feels.  We want our students to do similar things by taking the image of content and process the why and how it can be used in everyday life. 

We went this week into tech explorations and one of them was over math definitions.  I found it so interesting how they took so many vocabulary terms and provided visual and interactive elements to better explain the term than any words could do.  One thing I learned that I never really understood was how to use an abacus.  I know, teaching math you would think that I would understand and I probably could have if I took the time to look into it more, but I never did.  However, when looking up the vocabulary term of an abacus there was a mini activity where you use an abacus to show numerical form.  It’s not the most advanced tool now, but it’s such an important tool that earlier civilizations used to keep up with numbers on a grander level and I’m sure helped build civilization. 

I think after viewing the things found within this week’s lesson I can provide more rounded instruction for my students.  I would use imagery occasionally within my lessons, but it wasn’t a regular part of my instruction.  I see more now that visual literacy is a key component of learning and without it you are making the students think in such broad terms that you will undoubtedly get confusion and misdirection without visual stimuli that students pick up on and process quickly.   I’m going to use a lot of imagery to compare cultures from around the world to that of our own culture.  I’ll promote student self-worth by revealing the altered images of magazine ads and how propaganda can cause individuals to do things they would never normally think to do.  A picture is truly worth a thousand words because in that image you get more than the language of the situation.  You can see the setting, the emotion, the sensations the image provides and really understand what was going on and what people were feeling during the taking of those images.