1. Visual Literacy
By Emily Leimkuehler
Emily Leimkuehler

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

3. 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

4. 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

5. 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

6. 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

7. 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

8. 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

9. 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