Visual Literacy Methods & Tips for Teachers

What is Visual Literacy?  Visual literacy refers to the ability to create effective communications using visual images and also being able to analyze and attach meaning to the visual images that one might see.  By developing some basic visual literacy skills you can create powerful visual tools for use in your instruction.

Getting Started: Information Selection  Look at your curriculum and decide what are the most important points of information you need to get across.  Less information = better retention of information

Getting Started: Organization  Once you have selected the most important information, then you should begin deciding how to organize the information.  Try to organize information in a way that will help learners “chunk” the info.  Psychologist Stanley Miller theorized that we can only remember 7 different items at one time.  Chunking helps the learner to remember more information and gives you more “bang for your buck”.

Organization Cont.  You will also need to decide what you want learners to see first as well as what information you want to stand out.

Getting Started: Integration  Gestalt Theory- People tend to perceive information as a whole.  Be aware of Gestalt principles such as proximity and try to organize your visuals into meaningful wholes.  Tip: Use the same colors, shapes or alignment for a particular concept.

Elements of Good Design: CARP  Once you have thought about what information you want to include and how you would like to organize it; you can use the following CARP principles in order to help you develop better designs & stronger visual literacy skills.

CARP: Contrast  Creating contrast is a great way to direct your students’ attention to important points you are trying to make in your presentation.

CARP: Ways to Create Contrast  Make your headings larger & darker than the rest of the information.  Break up different sections of information by allowing some white space between points or paragraphs.  Use the different fonts and character effects available to you.  Consider bulleting or numbering when appropriate.

CARP: Alignment  The way you choose to align information can help your students follow the information down the page & can also be used to help students chunk information.  Text can be aligned around shapes, left or right margins, or it can be centered.  Text is easiest to understand if it is aligned to the left.

CARP: Repetition  Repetition helps to unify and organize a presentation.  You can create repetition by using the same pictures, fonts and font colors.

CARP: Proximity  Proximity refers to the distance between elements in a presentation.  Elements that are close together are viewed as being related and vice versa.

Tools for Effective Visuals  Type, shape, colors, depth and space can all be used as tools to help you develop better instructional visuals.

Tools for Effective Visuals: Type  Type is a very easy but effective way to create contrast, identify chunks of information, and it can also be used to express emotion or enhance the materials being presented.  Word has numerous fonts styles and you can also obtain specialty fonts from the web.  has numerous free fonts that teachers can use.

Tools for Effective Visuals: Shapes Shapes can be used to:  Show unity  Show a process  Focus attention  Show systems  Contain information  Help students make comparisons ex. Venn diagrams.  Separate and define information  Convey emotions  Provide direction  Imply motion

Tools for Effective Visuals: Shapes  In Word if you go to Insert-Pictures- AutoShapes you will find lots of shapes that you can put into your displays.  There is also software such as Inspiration which you can use to create nice looking visuals.

Tools for Effective Visuals: Color Color can be used to:  Label information (maps)  Identify quantities (charts & illustrations)  Represent reality  Create visual appeal  In order to change the color of your font in Word you click on Font-Color located in your toolbar.

Tools for Effective Visuals: Depth  Adding depth to your presentations can help information stand out.  You can create depth by using scale in order to make words stand out; or to show the actual size of an object by comparing it to another object.  You can also create depth by using the shadowing tool or by using actual pictures of objects in your presentations.

Tools for Effective Visuals: Space  Space (white space) is a great tool to use when you are trying to separate information, draw attention to information (trapped space) or clarify text.  Space can help balance information on a screen.  Space can also be used to show time progression.

In Closing…  Most teachers have an instinctual knowledge of many of the principles.  Hopefully you will be able to bring some new awareness of the principles mentioned in this presentation to the visuals in your classroom.  You can do it!

References All information in this presentation is from: Lohr, L. L. (2008). Creating graphics for learning and performance. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall.