1. Chapter 8 Enhancing Learning with Visuals
By Ayisha Brailsford

2. Visual Literacy refers to the learned ability to interpret visual massages accurately and to create such messages.
Visual Literacy

3. Visual Literacy  can be delivered through two major approaches: helping learners to decode, or "read", visuals proficiently by practicing visual analysis skills and helping learners to encode, or "write", visuals to express themselves and communicate with others.

4. Decoding: Interpreting Visuals
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.
Decoding: Interpreting Visuals

5. Encoding: Creating Visuals
Another aspect of visual literacy is the ability to create visual presentations.  You should encourage students to present reports to the class by carefully selecting images from a CD or online collection, which can help them to develop their aesthetic talents.

6. Types of Visuals Used in the Classroom
Let's Explore the six types of visuals commonly found in the classroom: pictures, drawing, (including sketches and diagrams), charts, graphs, posters, and cartoons.
Types of Visuals Used in the Classroom

7. Pictures are photographic (or photograph-like) representations of people, places, and things. They are readily available on the internet and in books, magazines, and newspaper.
Pictures

8. Drawings, sketches, and diagrams employ the graphic arrangement of lines to represent persons, places, things, and concepts. Drawings are readily found in textbooks and computer-based materials.
Drawings

9. Charts are visual representations of abstract relationships such as chronologies, quantities, and hierarchies. They appear frequently as tables and flowcharts.
Charts

10. Graphs
Graphs provide a visual representation of numerical data. They also illustrate relationships among units of data and trends over time.

11. Posters
Posters can incorporate visual combinations of images, lines, colors, and words. They are intended to capture and hold the viewer's attention at least long enough to communicate a brief message, usually a persuasive appeal.

12. Cartoons
Cartoons are drawings that are rough caricatures of real fictional people, animals, and events. They appear in a variety of print media, newspapers, periodicals, and textbooks.

13. Purposes of Visuals Provide a concrete referent for ideas
Make abstract ideas concrete
Motivate Learners
Direct Attention
Repeat Information
Recall Prior Learning
Reduce Learning Effort  

14. Categories of Visuals
The visual selected for a particular situation should depend on the learning task. Visuals can be subdivided into six categories.

15. Realistic Visuals show the actual object under study
Realistic Visuals show the actual object under study. They can translate abstract ideas into a more realistic format, allowing instruction to move from one level of abstract symbols on the concrete-abstract continuum to a more concrete level.
Realistic Visuals

16. Analogical Visuals
Analogical Visuals convey a concept or topic by showing something else and implying a similarity.

17. Organizational
Organizational visuals show the qualitative relationships among various elements, Common examples include classification charts, timelines, flowcharts, and maps.

18. Relational
Relational visuals communicate quantitative relationships. Examples include bar and pie charts or line and pictorial graphs.

19. Transformational
Transformational visuals illustrate movement or change in time and space.

20. Interpretive visuals illustrate theoretical or abstract relationships
Interpretive visuals illustrate theoretical or abstract relationships. Examples include a schematic diagram of an electrical circuit, the food pyramid, or an evacuation plan.
Interpretive

21. There are many ways to view visuals in a classroom
Viewing Visuals

22. Presentation Software
Presentation Software provides a format for displaying computer-based visuals with a digital projector. The most widely known presentation software is a PowerPoint.
Presentation Software

23. Digital Images
Visuals can be captured and stored in a digital format by using a digital camera or a scanner. Digital storage methods include CDs, DVDs, portable storage devices, and computer hard drives.

24. Overhead Projector
The overhead projector system is still widely used in classrooms because of its availability, low cost, and ease of use.

25. Visual Design Guidelines
Designing a visual begins with gathering or producing the individual pictorial and text elements that you expect to use.
Arrangement
Balance
Legibility
Color
Appeal
Universal Design

26. Creating Visuals
Planning is an important component of creating visuals
Planning
Lettering Techniques
Drawing Sketching, and Cartooning.
Designing Visuals with Computers
Creating Presentation Graphics
Creating Overhead Transparencies

27. The End