Visual Literacy By Emily Leimkuehler Emily Leimkuehler

What is visual literacy? The ability to interpret visual messages accurately and to create such messages. Emily Leimkuehler

Importance of visual literacy… Visuals can have a multitude of purposes in the classroom: To provide meaningful references for ideas Make abstract ideas more concrete motivate your students Help direct attention to important concepts Repeat learning with different modalities Provide assistance in recalling prior learning Reduce the effort required to learn Emily Leimkuehler

Why bother to use visuals in instruction Why bother to use visuals in instruction? What value do they add to the learning process? Visuals inundate today’s students, so their ability to read, create, analyze, and learn from the persuasiveness of visuals has become more important then ever. Emily Leimkuehler

How can visuals be designed to influence student learning? Decoding visual learning: seeing a visual does not automatically ensure that one will learn from it. Learners must be guided toward correct decoding of visuals. One aspect of visual literacy, then, is the skill of interpreting and creating meaning from visuals. Encoding visual learning: another aspect of visual literacy is the ability to create visual presentations. Just as writing can spur reading, producing visuals can be a highly effective way of understanding their uses. Emily Leimkuehler

Two general approaches that you may use to teach visual literacy… Helping learners to decode, or “read,” visuals proficiently by practicing visual analysis skills Helping learners to encode, or “write,” visuals to express themselves with others. Emily Leimkuehler

The six types of visuals and an example of each… Pictures—photographs of local architecture Drawings—drawing stick figures and arrows to show motion in an otherwise static representation Charts—organization charts, classification charts, and timelines Graphs—bar, pictorial, circle, and line Posters—promoting good health practice such as not using drugs and avoiding junk food or to illustrate a concept such as photosynthesis Cartoons—line drawings that are rough caricatures of real or fictional people, animals, and events. Emily Leimkuehler

Presentation Software Provides a format for displaying computer-based visuals with a digital projector The most widely known presentation software is PowerPoint where students, as well as teachers, can use templates to produce very professional-looking presentations Emily Leimkuehler

The qualities of an essential question Provide a concrete reference for ideas Make abstract ideas concrete Motive learners Direct attention Repeat information Recall prior learning Reduce learning effort Emily Leimkuehler