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)

Adolescent Interview...the more the merrier

It seems that I am always in the presence of teens.  My lunch break, prep time time, and 9^th periods have become a mini hangout for a mix of students who are bored with a study hall or who are escaping the drama of the cafeteria. Asking one student for an interview found everyone else in the room wanting to participate, so my questions elicited several responses that I am generalizing in my reporting. 

My 5 interviewees are each 16 years old females, 2 freshman and 3 10^th graders, who prefer not to be in the culture of the crowded cafeteria. They do not know one another from common classes or common out of school interests. I am making some generalizations here, but I would say that each of them comes from a fairly stable family, they are bright and are scholastically B-ish  students. Two students are white, three are latino. They are an open-minded group of kids. None of them belong to a clique or particular group per se.They are not art majors, but definitely like to noodle around with materials, ideas and are in general a lighthearted group. I mention all of this, as I do not think my interviewees represent the most general population of adolescent high school students.

I started the interview with the basic questions…What devices do you use? How much time do you spend each day electronically connected? Do you use your phone in school? How do you use the internet as a tool in your schoolwork? Multiple devices, definitely phones, too much time, yes to phone use in school, Google search, wickipedia and maybe a data base  or jstor for info. They generally preferred video and reading as primary ways to learn school content. Not instead of a teacher, but to enhance learning…they all agreed that the visual stimulation of a video kept them engaged. Pretty uneventful responses.

Then I asked about social media, free time, and personal interests and the discussion livened up .I found the conversation really informative, as I don’t use social media very often. The uses and nuance of each site seems quite specific. Facebook, Tumbler, Twitter and Snapchat were the most widely used social media sites. The first thing they did agree on, was that they preferred to talk with friends face to face because it was easier to communicate with facial gestures, actual expression and there isn’t a weird response time lapse. And rather then phone calls, they use group chats to hang out together from different locations. 

 Facebook is used to for contacting friends and family.

 “It’s not a space to express yourself or to really communicate. You can’t have an opinion without lots of drama. People believe everything on Facebook to be true. It’s uptight.”

 They thought identity creation on Facebook was, “pretty bogus and suspect”. Facebook is generally considered old school and is pretty public.

 “You don’t “really” expose anything about yourself, and people who comment on your stuff aren’t really “friends”, sometimes they don’t know you at all. And then there’s the drama with people saying stuff second hand.”

Snapchat was regarded as a venue for creating a diary style communication with a few friends. “You take pictures of dumb, random things and send them to people. Jokes or maybe what you ate for breakfast. It’s usually just to goof around, just for fun.” 

Twitter communications happened between acquaintances or with people they know. Didn’t seem that there was much activity happening there, but they did immediately mention it as a 3^rd media site.

When they got to Tumbler…OMG…I almost had to ask them to raise their hands, so I could hear them.

So what is it about Tumbler?!

 There was a momentary deep silence, some giggling…and then, ”Tumbler was created to get away from Facebook. Its everything you can imagine! It’s a different environment, you can follow whoever. It’s just a bunch of people, its less uptight, there’s a playful mood. It’s a place that you can be less self-conscious, kind of stream of consciousness. It has a peculiar sense of humor. It’s a collection of oddball odds and ends. There’s some of everyone’s interests.” 

What kinds of stuff? I need a little more direction here.

 “It’s artsy, political, sexual and funny. You can be Tumbler Famous…(I’m thinking of Andy Warhol’s prophetic statement, “ In the future, everyone will be famous for 15 minutes.”)  “We photoshop memes…like the D_O_G_E meme”.(They spell it because they agree that none of them knows the real pronunciation). “We change stuff and share it. Sometimes you post spam- you know, useless creative videos of yourself or to u-tube.  When I first went on Tumbler, I felt like an outsider at first. The sense of humor was too weird…I didn’t get it. Then you go on for a while and you do it too”.  “There are blogs for social justice and women’s rights. It connects you to the whole world of what people are thinking about.”  

Have you made any friends from other places through Tumbler, people you personally contact?

 “I communicate with a girl from France about our common interests in movies and books, and 2 girls from England, we like the same music and  we talk about how different things are here and there.” “Sometimes you follow someone for a while and then not for a while”.

 How do you go from blogging to becoming friends?

“You can check out who they are through say, Facebook and send a message, it can become a chat and then you can agree to skype”.

Do ever feel your privacy is at risk, or you are ever in danger of anything?

“ No, you have the option of blocking people, you can report or delete strangers. And then there’s Rule #1, Never talk to anyone you don’t know on social media.” 

Where did you learn that?

 “I don’t remember, ever since we were little you always hear that.”

 Okay, last question. What do you consider a drawback of social media? Do you find it distracting?

“All we do is stay on our phones watching u-tube videos.” “ Ever since I found the computer, I never go outside.” “I know I could be more productive, I need to get a hold of time management.” “ I feel addicted to Tumbler. Its never the same, its always changing”.  “If I have 3 hours at night, I spend most of my time on social media or the computer, and then I have to rush through my homework. If  I try to do homework first, I rush through it to get onto my phone”. “I can’t cut myself off. There is a program on my tablet. It reminds you of your time spent. You can set it up to cut you off.”

Do you use it? “No, not yet,……. but I guess I should think about it.”  

Now I'm curious to see one of their tumbler accounts. My grown up friends' sites don't seem quite so "funny" .

 It would be interesting to really get an inside view of what is tweaking the interests of these adolescents, from the fly on the wall perspective...only for a moment of course.We don't really want to know the all of it.

      

               

Media Literacy in Schools

Public schools are in need of a huge shift in paradigm beginning with an unbiased examination of their purpose, mission statement, affordances, curriculum, culture and politics. 

Is it the purpose of public schools to truly serve their population, the entire population, regardless of class, gender, socioeconomic situation and political/religious affiliations?

 Is it their responsibility to prepare young people for success in the 21^st century? Who decides what success looks like? Is it functional literacy? And is the participation gap with unequal access contributing to the possibility of yet another cultural divide, a “new cultural elite”? (Ivey, 2006) Is there funding for after school programing to create some catch up? The new donated 3d printer in my school looks like job training to me. 

 Is the purpose of education to create engaged citizenship? Then why have civics classes been reduced to boring and irrelevant? (Bennett, 2008) My high school students tell me that in their Civics class there are few discussions about current events, opinions are stifled and course content essentially describes the structure of the hierarchy, no commentary. (Well, that’s a class I could not teach. Perhaps it is an exercise in doing as you are told. I can’t believe ANY teacher has nothing to say in that arena) Lots of packets of information.

(Before installing a collaborative student art project about personal and cultural identity, I passed along a quick image for administrative approval…regular protocol. I was surprised to be questioned about the reason for the prominent inclusion of the Virgin of Guadalupe. No mention was made of the symbol representing  the Marines or  the creepy masked character  from some graphically violent movie)  

 Why is critical thinking an optimal skill set in math and science, and critical inquiry as discourse de-emphasized? Why is STEM more rigorously promoted, when almost all research in cognitive studies support STEAM? (The A is for art…creative, open ended problem solving, expression, materials exploration, visual literacy, perceptual acuity, self-reflection, meta cognition, inquiry and historic reference) Schools need to regard the arts as important culturally, personally and, socially….This is one place in the school where identity can be explored, eyes wide open.

Why are phones allowed in schools? Who designs protocol and socially accepted practices? Are we afraid of the fallout? Or perhaps the police state that would ensue….I get it…kind of.

 Are we educating students that there are several modes of communication… that the linguistics/language they use for social communication is not appropriate to be successful in the “conventional” world? Or that rude is just rude, and hurtful is hurtful, even if there isn’t a physical body interacting with the communication.

 Old and new literacies need to be melded, compared and practiced with relevance. Students should be asked to write to an editor or a Politian about something that's just plain wrong, or write to someone they admire, a musician. Start a dialog with an expert or a student from another country. Do journal entries, practice public speaking. Have them interview someone in their community, or the person in their classroom who they know nothing about.  Blog, chat make videos and short animations …say something important or funny or that expresses a concern. Develop a voice…then figure out how to make it appropriate in all arenas.. Be exposed to spoken word, share your music of choice, write authentically about a cultural experience, listen to people telling stories, and learn to deconstruct an ad.Discuss, confer, argue if need be, support you comments with evidence.

In our school we have a Women’s Studies class, an LGBT and more club, an Advertising Media class and a student run TV station (Although very censored). They are all electives. A small portion of the population participates.

 Shouldn’t these discussions be a part of the mandated curriculum? How to 

use a  condom  is part of Health class...., thankfully I might add. 

   

And where are our parents?  Bill Ivey, the former chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts , and Steven J.Tepper a professor of Sociology,  in an article  in the Chronicle of Higher Education(2006),  address the  necessity of parents taking an active role in children’s earliest relationships to media. Parents lack basic information that help them to understand expanding media options, so in general and understandably, they act as gatekeepers. But some studies show that exposure and adult guidance and discussion helps children to navigate media by making meaningful choices. They learn about consequences and develop appropriate behaviors. That being said, the reality of mummy and daddy standing by and sharing their children’s screen time experiences seems unrealistic.And if you haven't done it by middle school...FORGET IT!!!   I have a lot of students who don’t frequently see their parents, eat a home cooked meal or have heat where they live. Their guidance is social media exchanges with a cohort living in similar circumstance. For those parents who might get involved, there are few education programs for  and then there is the time factor

.

Parent education programs in my District have meager turn outs at best. Last week a program on teen violence attracted 16 parents.( A high school population of 2300)

Character education used to happen at home,and in the community.(Not to say it doesn't anymore. I am speaking to the "other" situations) Perhaps Jenkins supports participatory culture for this very reason. A group of people all ages, a community of choice, with mentors and role models working together. Nice image of functioning democratic framework. No whacky family dynamics involved and perhaps more support and acceptance then what is found in some real time, actual communities. Perhaps the next generation of the commune. It takes a village?

(I have several students who find solace and community through cos-play, sharing art on sites like DeviantArt, or through discussions on blogs about gender and mental health...conversations they may not engage at home.)

      

In general  Jenkins suggests three core competencies to be taught in the the new paradigm in schools in conjunction with traditional literacies. I would agree. I  think it is the responsibility of everyone to participate in the "education" of each other, particularly the youth. I keep telling them," You're in charge next, better get along and better figure out whats important."

• Affordances of technology in a participatory sense and the necessity to close the participation gap in a move toward democratic equality.
•   Transparency…equipping our students with strong literacy skills, and the ability to recognize the who, what, and why of various forms of communication produced at us as consumers of various media.
•  The ability to engage in critical inquiry, and to have the self-confidence and tools to be part of the dialog, to be producers of our collective cultural knowledge and to recognize our ability to create change.  

 Jenkins’ call to paradigm shift in education is supported by Green’s approach to literacy. Both frameworks encourage use of language (s), understanding context and content and recognition and critical analysis of the construction of knowledge. It all seems indistinguishable, interrelated and dependent . How do we start the revolution?

Resources:

Bennett. Lance,  “Changing Citizenship in the Digital Age “, c 2008 MIT, Creative Commons

Jenkins, Henry,” Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21^st Century”https://mitpress.mit.edu/sites/default/files/titles/free_download/9780262513623_Confronting_the_Challenges.pdf

“The Challenge Ahead: Ensuring that All Benefit from the Expanding Media Landscape”, Chronicle of Higher Education (May 19, 2006) Bill Ivey and Stephan Tepper