Visual Literacy and the Internet

Visual literacy, the internet, teaching and learning are at such a fundamental level. At this point as an educator, if you aren’t utilizing and teaching with these things always on your mind, you are absolutely shortchanging your students. Even if the project the kid is making is a posterboard with macaroni glued on it, visual literacy plays a role. Every part of our oversaturated, over-media exposed lives is loaded with visual literacy. Teaching students how to have the proper filters and aesthetics is critical for them.

I found this article online, http://ccb.lis.illinois.edu/Projects/youth/literacies/cpl.html, and I plan to incorporate this simple approach to visual literacy with at least one grade level when school starts this year, partnering with a 2nd grade classroom teacher. I’ll go into her classroom and use this approach with her students. I love it because it’s literacy based, and will easily integrate into a language arts lesson. They call it a “see-think-wonder” strategy which fits perfectly with our school vision. Our school leadership encourages curiosity and questioning with our students, and students keep a “wonder journal” throughout the year, posing questions and other thoughts of things they wonder about.

I plan to adapt that lesson for students for a short presentation for our staff at a faculty meeting later in the year when we aren't drowning in all the 'beginning of the year' stuff. I think little sound bytes of awareness and education for my staff will allow them to incorporate just a few questions and observations with their students. Over time, it will seem like a natural integration into all of their subject matter.

The internet already plays a huge role in my computer lab and in the classrooms of the teachers I work with. It is part of daily life, and it’s my job to teach them how to be careful users and consumers of information. A lot of what is available is really just a waste of brain cells, really (and I’m freely admitting an extensive loss of brain cells this summer vacation myself….mostly from FACEBOOK!!!), or invalid resources, or downright wrong information….I’m thinking lots of email forwards here that people believe without checking the facts. I also am focusing this year on cyberbullying, and have been developing presentations that are grade level appropriate for each student in my school, in the hopes that they’ll be better participants and learners when using the internet.