Enhancing Visual Literacy: Theories, Practices, and Examples

1. VisUalLEARNing Karen R. Petitto, Ed.D.West Virginia Wesleyan CollegeJune 14, 2006

2. VisUalLEARNing • Theorists and practices of Visual Learning • Examples • Resolution Primer • Location & Management of Digital Images • WWW – the great multimedia medium • Virtual Tours

3. Visual Literacy Visual Literacy can be defined as the ability to understand and produce visual messages.

4. Chapman’s Intelligences • Verbal/Linguistic • Musical/Rhythmic • Logical/Mathematical • Visual/Spatial • Bodily/Kinesthetic

5. Chapman’s Intelligence Theory • Verbal/Linguistic • Musical/Rhythmic • Logical/Mathematical • Visual/Spatial • Bodily/Kinesthetic

6. Visual Intelligence • The capacity to • perceive the visual world accurately • to be able to recreate one’s visual experiences • the ability to see form, color, shape, and texture in the “mind’s eye” • to transfer real or virtual images to concrete representation Chapman, Carolyn. If the Shoe Fits… Skylight: Illinois, 1993

7. How to Engage the Visual Learner • Classroom Environment • Think about • Reflect on • Imagine

8. Discouraging the Visual Learner • Long print passages • Little graphic design • Communication with words • Long writing assignments

9. Learning Styles Examples with specific content and activities that meet each style. How much time students spend on multimedia activities each day, several other slides from the presentation. What are they doing? What does it look like? Show some dvd clips? OJ Simpson photo, are these publications “equal” do they have like agendas? How do the articles differ? Can you draw comparisons from story to story that correlate image to image? 9:30 ArtStor overview (30 minutes) (as they might introduce it at future trainings) 8:30 Introduction (1 hour) Learning Styles Examples with specific content and activities that meet each style. How much time students spend on multimedia activities each day, several other slides from the presentation. What are they doing? What does it look like? Show some dvd clips? OJ Simpson photo, are these publications “equal” do they have like agendas? How do the articles differ? Can you draw comparisons from story to story that correlate image to image? 9:30 ArtStor overview (30 minutes) (as they might introduce it at future trainings) 8:30 Introduction (1 hour) Learning Styles Examples with specific content and activities that meet each style. How much time students spend on multimedia activities each day, several other slides from the presentation. What are they doing? What does it look like? Show some dvd clips? OJ Simpson photo, are these publications “equal” do they have like agendas? How do the articles differ? Can you draw comparisons from story to story that correlate image to image? 9:30 ArtStor overview (30 minutes) (as they might introduce it at future trainings) at future trainings) 8:30 Introduction (1 hour) Learning Styles Examples with specific content and activities that meet each style. How much time students spend on multimedia activities each day, several other slides from the presentation. What are they doing? What does it look like? Show some dvd clips? OJ Simpson photo, are these publications “equal” do they have like agendas? How do the articles differ? Can you draw comparisons from story to story that correlate image to image? 9:30 ArtStor overview (30 minutes) (as they might introduce it at future trainings)

10. Visual Literacy for Living • body language • drawing, painting, sculpture • hand signs • street signs • international symbols • layout of the pictures and words in a textbook, the clarity of type fonts • computer images • student produced still pictures, sequences, movies or video, • television and print advertisements

11. Multimedia World • Students today live in a multimedia world and appreciate variety in their learning environment. • Some forms of literacy they can develop include • Textual • Numerical • Visual • Audio • Multimedia

13. Study of Signs Roland Barthes images have at least two levels of meaning denotative, where an image can denote certain apparent truths through its literal, descriptive meaning; connotative, where culturally specific meanings apply—the cultural and historic contexts, for example, of the image and its viewers’ experiences and understandings—all that an image means personally and socially. Semiotics

24. Robert Frank, Trolley—New Orleans, 1955-56

29. Image Resolution - defined • Image resolution - the number of pixels in a digital photo. • Image resolution is expressed in terms of pixel dimensions • Pixel dimensions — the number of pixels tall by the number of pixels wide OR the total number of pixels. • 1280 x 960 pixels - number of pixels tall by the number of pixels wide resolution of, • 1.2 megapixels - total number of pixels (A megapixel is 1 million pixels.)

30. Pixels • PIXELS or picture elements

31. Print or Post? • A print from a high-resolution image rivals anything you can produce from a film camera • A print from a low-resolution image looks fine online but is not adequate for printing. • curved and diagonal lines have a jagged, stair-stepped appearance • fine details and subtle color transitions are lost

32. High - Low

33. Resolution Printing Rule of Thumb Resolution  Max picture size 640 x 480 (.3 mp)                               3" x 4" 960 x 1200 (1.1 mp)                           5" x 7" 1300 x 1600 (2 mp)                            8" x 10" 1600 x 2000 (3 mp)                      9 1/2" X 11 1/2" 2100 x 3100 (6.2 mp)                  12 1/2" x 18 1/2“ http://www.jnevins.com/resolution.htm

34. Online Resources

35. Critical Reading of the Internet Participants in this environment often need to read and evaluate so much material, from so many sources, that it becomes impossible to maintain a critical discerning attitude toward it all. The very volume and number of voices has a kind of leveling effect – everything seems to come from the same place and nothing seems much more reliable than anything else. This makes the need to evaluate the value and credibility of what one encounters on the Internet a crucial skill if one is to be an active beneficiary of the available information and interaction.

36. Web Site Evaluation • Purpose • Source • Content • Style See Kathy Schrock’s Evaluation Guide for Virtual Tours

37. Virtual Tours • List of Educational Virtual Tours from the Utah Education Network http://www.uen.org/tours/html/links.html • Discovery, Google Earth and the National Park Service http://dsc.discovery.com/videogalleries/nationalparks/nationalparks.html • See more online resources listed in the Social Studies Resource Guide

38. http://www.saveellisisland.org/site/PageServer?pagename=SouthSideTourhttp://www.saveellisisland.org/site/PageServer?pagename=SouthSideTour

39. http://www.galvinized.com/ellis/play.html