Eclectic Technology

In our world today we are surrounded by visuals. Yet we walk into many classrooms and see many written texts that often have few visuals. This post begins with a quote from John Medina, the author of Brain Rules (and a developmental molecular biologist). He states "We are incredible at remembering pictures. Hear a piece of information, and three days later you’ll remember 10% of it. Add a picture and you’ll remember 65%. Professionals everywhere need to know about the incredible inefficiency of text-based information and the incredible effects of images (http://www.brainrules.net/vision)."

There is also a video that was created by students explaining their frustration with the lack of visual learning that takes place in the classroom.

Additional sections include:

* Use Visuals, Images, Data Visualizations, Infographics and Videos to Teach Concepts

* Use and Teach Learners How to Make Concept Maps and Graphic Organizers

* Use and Teach Learners How to Do Sketchnotes

* Allow and Encourage Learners to Show What They Know Through Visual Imagery

* Teach Visual Literacy

Jackie Gerstein provides a thought provoking post with links to additional resources. Take the time to read and consider how you might increase the use of visuals in your classroom. And if you have not read John Medina's book you might want to check out his website.

Learn more about graphicacy in this post by ASIDE. There is a short motion graphic (explainer video) that provides an overview what visual literacy is...a way to encode/decode images and the ability to analyze visual information are two components.

Research makes it clear that we have many visual learners in our classrooms (~65%). In addition "the brain processes optic inputs 60,000 times faster than text."

This post provides links to a number of articles that ASIDE has published that discuss graphicacy and provide great resources. You will also find information in ASIDE on creating infographics with students as young as Grade 2.

What is visual literacy? The Institute of Museum and Library Services defines it as  "Demonstrate the ability to interpret, recognize, appreciate, and understand information presented through visible actions, objects and symbols, natural or man-made"

(http://www.imls.gov/about/21st_century_skills_list.aspx).

This is a 21st century skill and our students need to be visually literate. This post shares:

* Standards that support visual literacy (from Common Core, National Council of Teachers of English Standards and the Mid-Continent Research for Education and Learning Corporation.

* A lengthy list of the many formats you will find visuals that you can use as teaching tools, such as political cartoons, symbols, dioramas, and advertisements.

* Visual Thinking Routines - each of the routines is described and two have videos that demonstrate them. The ones with videos are Model Think Aloud Strategy, and Introduction to Visual Thinking Strategies that is "a specific approach to whole-class viewing and talking about art that primarily uses [three] questions."

Additional resources include Asking the 4Ws, Five Card Flickr, Image Analysis Worksheets (five different ones), and a lesson: Step-by-Step: Working with Images that Matter. 

We know that many of our students are visual learners and that they need to be able to "read" images. This post provides a wealth of resources that will help make your students adept at this process.

What is visual thinking? How can we teach visual thinking to our learners? ASIDE has an excellent post that provides five presentations that explore visual thinking from different perspectives. All of them share information on the "the power of visuals to craft a layered approach toward teaching with creative design." The five presentations (all from slideshare) are:

* Visual Thinking Presentation

* Visual Thinking and the Writing Process

* Visual Thinking for Brainstorming, Planning, Learning, Collaborating, Harvesting

* An Introduction to Visual Thinking

* Visual Thinking Help us to...

Each of these presentations provides a different viewpoint. Many of our learners are visual learners today. This post will provide you with great resources to help them hone the skill of visual thinking (and will also help you).

What a difference a visual can make? Check out the projects shown in this post. Compare the linear version (text only) with a visual that has the same information but presented in a completely different way. Which one do you think your students would be able to drawn to?

In this post ASIDE provides a bit of the history of how they have gone about teaching their students to create visuals (also known as infographics).

Along with providing the visual and the linear version of three projects they also provide two charts:

* The Elements of Design (the tools to make art)

* The Principles of Design ( how to use the tools to make art)

There are many free tools that help students create visuals. If you have been considering a project that would have your students take part in this type of project this post provides valuable information that will help the project run more smoothly.

Check out these great Visual Literacy Teacher Resources that will help you teach visual litearcy skills to your students. There are four downloads available, for ages 4 - 7, 8 - 10, 11 - 13 and 14 - 18. Each is 3 pages long and provides three images. Each image incorporates four learning tasks with a teaching note for each as well as a Ready to Learn section and a Follow Up Action. A portion of the first page of the download for ages 4 - 7 is shown above.