Literacy Guide For Visual Literacy Education

Literacy Guide for supporting visual literacy education in middle school and high school: for educators and student learners.

“Considering the many ways in which media literacy skills are important to an individual’s successful functioning in society-and that they are likely to become more important in the future-media literacy should be a consistent part of students’ formal education.”

                                                                                                                  - Media Education Lab

The purpose of this guide is to create a resource for educators who use visual materials with their students. This guide would be particularly helpful for visual arts and humanities based educators, and although I was writing the guide for middle to high school aged students, I have used some of the methods and tools working with younger children. Included in the guide are resources that demonstrate and or/illustrate simple methods, questions, and tools for teachers to incorporate into everyday classroom use to support thinking skills that become habitual and transfer from lesson to lesson: oral and written language literacy, visual literacy,  and collaborative knowledge building  among peers.

The general framework or goal is to incorporate activities that introduce and support visual literacy in the classroom in an interdisciplinary manner, to help students to see connections, to ask questions, to trust their perceptive intuition and to learn to read artifacts as text/communicating information greater than the surface or initial “reading” . The purpose is to teach students how to research through inquiry and how to identify cultural, social, historic, political and affective context of visual artifacts in support of critical literacy.

Some of the sites listed are places for educators to brainstorm, to be inspired by or to see examples of how art and media educators are incorporating visual literacy skills into their curriculum, with global concept based lesson plans. Most of the sites are student friendly.

 In my own teaching I have recently added  spoken word  videos, visual journaling, dance, graffiti for social justice, poetry, graphic novels, semiotics and typography. I have found specific favorite sites and artists etc, that  support my teaching that I use to engage my students. There is SO much out there. I think the trick is to find what speaks to you, and then to use it as your tool. You can share a method, a framework, resources, even a philosophy, but the mash up is your own.

 I can see the organic and ever growing nature of this thing we are calling a literacy guide. When I cruise around the Internet, or when students, friends and colleagues turn me onto a meme , an image, a book, a u tube something, a tumbler link, a blog, an open source site, music, a new technology, another tool in Photoshop, an app or a zine that they find interesting, my resource list grows… and grows.

Here is a working description of some of the sites/tools in the guide: 

(The guide is then listed separately. Feel free to make use of whatever you can.)

VTS (visual thinking strategies) Using VTS in the classroom has been documented to have a positive effect on both teachers and students. It is a simple process of inquiry and observation that supports key behaviors sought by Common Core Standards, 21^st Century learning skills and more importantly, the” other” critical thinking.The site has a great simple example/tutorial of VTS being employed in its simplest form.

Art 21, The Getty, The Whitney and The Spiral Workshop each develop conversations and lessons around concepts and ideas having to do with contemporary issues in culture:  personally and globally. They are great resources for ideas, inspiration, and understanding. Art 21 has video clips and programs of varying length that can be used in the classroom, or for teacher education. Contemporary art can be hard to understand. It contains lots of ambiguities, but it is a great resource for looking at the world. Students are often times perplexed when introduced to an unfamiliar form, but the number of questions and emotions that come to the surface are a true sign of engagement. The line between art and media are blurring, and this is their world. Visual expression always has context and a relationship to its own history.

Google Culture is a great collection of visual artifacts. The “How to use Google Culture” tutorial says it all. You (teacher and student…it’s that simple) can research an artifact; compare it to another artifact, even from another time. You can curate a collection, and what’s really great , is that you can research the cultural, historic and social context of an artifact.( An artifact might be a photo, a letter, a tool, an artwork etc.)

Lite Mind has great examples and tools to help students become familiar with graphic representation as a form of communication , to learn to map and to see their own, or the groups connectivity,…meta-cognition…kids love to draw if it has nothing to do with true representation. Lots of artists are playing with mapping, systems and visual representation..particularly when expressing our dear friend data.

The Media Education Lab, The Media Literacy Project and Spark Media are really important resources. Each site has links to deconstructed advertisements, powerful videos and media campaigns, u tube videos and examples of student content….all really student geared and student friendly. The site contains specific lesson plans about teaching students how to identify and evaluate propaganda, the 5 key questions and 8 media concepts integral to media literacy and materials to support lessons. Suggestions/ discussions about student creation and distribution, with a participatory interactive link… for feedback/data gathering and crowd sourcing. 

   Literacy Guide for supporting visual literacy education in middle school and high school: for educators and student learners.

 

Adbusters.org Journal of the mental environment, anti-consumerist magazine.(media literacy project) (also Adbuster advertisements @Google images)

 Art 21::Peabody Award-winning television series, using the power of digital media to introduce people of all ages to contemporary art and artists. Artist interviews categorized by theme. http://www.pbs.org/art21/about-art21

Art Babble referred to as  “You Tube of the Arts”, the site offers high definition videos of art, classical to  contemporary. http://www.artbabble.org/

The Getty Museum/ Open Studio the Getty Artists Program, for a target audience of K–12 teachers, with the goal of making contemporary arts education accessible to teachers and classrooms across the nation and around the world.( Artist ,Xui Bing, using symbols)  http://www.getty.edu/education/

 Google Cultural Institute brings together millions of artifacts from multiple partners, with stories that bring them to life, in a virtual museum.(Interactive research and viewing site/interdisciplinary ) Great site for comparing and deeply observing visual materials, placing materials in cultural/historic context. (Good how to tutorial to get started.) https://www.google.com/culturalinstitute/

Litemind.com: “Exploring ways to use our minds more efficiently.” (Including mind maps) Visual thinking tools that help to structure information, helping you to better analyze, comprehend, synthesize, recall and generate new ideas.

 https://litemind.com/what-is-mind-mapping/

The Media Education Lab at the University of Rhode Island advances media education through research and community service. They emphasize interdisciplinary scholarship and practice that stands at the intersection of communication, media and education. http://mediaeducationlab.com/

 

·         Analyzing Contemporary Propaganda ( A project by the Media Lab Education) Promotes dialog and discussion about what constitutes contemporary propaganda and the positive, benign or negative impacts on the individual.(Interactive, crowd sourcing) http://www.mindovermedia.tv

 

Media Literacy Project approaching media literacy education from a media justice framework. Five key questions for teaching media literacy.

 http://medialiteracyproject.org/learn/media-literacy  

Open Culture: “The best free cultural and educational media on the Web”. Open Culture brings together high-quality cultural & educational media for the worldwide lifelong learning community. Video, e-books, sound recordings, poetry, teaching resources, lectures, MOOCs  and lots more. https://openculture.com/

Spiral Workshop, at the University of Illinois at Chicago.. This site is designed for art teachers to share innovative approaches to middle and high school art curriculum, developed by research from the UIC Art Education Program, focusing on “the collaborative task of rethinking the style and content of art education in the 21^st century.” (Innovative(sometimes collaboratively based) lesson plans) The Big Questions Project https://www.uic.edu/classes/ad/ad382/sites/Projects/P003/P003_first.html

Spark Media Project (Spark) aims to create opportunities for all young people to develop the communication, critical thinking and problem solving skills and habits of mind they will need to become active participants in the 21st Century. (Radio, video and animation) Student made videos are available for viewing.  sparkmediaproject.org/

 How to ….do anything, make, fix, tutorials

 You tube.com

 Whitney Museum.org

Activities that focus on works of art in the Whitney’s collection and special exhibitions. Through discussion, research, art making, and writing activities, the site encourages close looking, fostering conversation between students and connects artwork to classroom learning…with teen specific focus. http://whitney.org/Education/ForTeachers/Activities

Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS) is a method initiated by teacher-facilitated discussions of art images. It is perhaps the simplest way in which teachers  can provide students with key behaviors and thinking skills that become habitual and transferrable to oral and written language literacy, visual literacy, and collaborative interactions among peers www.vtshome.org/

www.vtshome.org/what-is-vts  ( 10 minute intro to VTS in action)