One of my colleagues posted this definition of literacy:
In broad terms, literacy is the ability to make and communicate meaning from and by the use of a variety of socially contextual symbols. Within various levels of developmental ability, a literate person can derive and convey meaning, and use their knowledge to achieve a desired purpose or goal that requires the use of language skills, be they spoken or written. A literate person can mediate their world by deliberately and flexibly orchestrating meaning from one linguistic knowledge base and apply or connect it to another knowledge base. For example, knowing that letters symbolize sounds, and that those sounds form words to which the reader can attach meaning, is an example of the cognitive orchestration of knowledge, a literate person conducts. Literacy is "not in isolated bits of knowledge but in students' growing ability to use language and literacy in more and broader activities" (Moll, 1994, p. 202).The definition of literacy is dynamic, evolving, and reflects the continual changes in our society. Literacy has, for instance, expanded to include literacy in information and communication technologies and critical literacy (Cunningham, 2000; Harste, 1994; Leu, 2002; Mol1, 1994; Paris, Lipson & Wixson, 1994; Yopp & Singer, 1994).
I really like this definition and some parts of this definition fall in line with visual literacy. The use of the term “socially contextual symbols” falls in line with visual literacy. Visual literacy involves taking in symbols, labels, charts, graphs, images, paintings, comics, and much more. It also says “The definition of literacy is dynamic, evolving, and reflects the continual changes in our society.” This is something that visual literacy is going through today. Visual literacy is very important and necessary to for the future of tomorrow, the children of today to learn. When we continue to not include visual literacy in our classrooms we are hurting our students and pushing them behind.
In order to become literate in visual literacy you have to be able to do standard reading. You need to read the various websites directions to be able to learn how to use them. You need to be able to read the directions on your camera and learn how to change the focus, the color, etc. It is possible to learn about elements of visual literacy such as color, line, zoom, etc. from a video I suppose, but being able to read is essential. You need to be able to communicate verbally with others to learn from their experiences.
I am learning that there are many easy to use this literacy and that you can go much more in depth with visual literacy than I expected. I thought that it would just be about using these new technologies for visual literacy such as making a comic or a video, etc. but there is much more to it. You can learn about colors and lines and other elements of film that effect your images and how your audience perceives them. You can have a discussion about a picture, painting, drawing, anything and talk about how you perceive it and why and how other people perceive the same image and why.
In my placement, visual literacy would be pretty much new to them I think. I know that they have computer time twice a week, and that they play educational games, and have a piano key board that they use on one of the days, I have never seen them create anything though. I have heard students talking about the fact that they have facebooks, and I’m sure they are all pretty good at using computers, as many young people are. I just don’t think that they are physically being exposed to visual literacy and what it means and how they can use it themselves. I do think it would be something that they would all be very interested in though because they all look forward to computer time.
While I am learning about this new literacy: visual literacy, I am reading a lot of articles, watching a lot of videos and listening to people on videos also. When I use my new technology (comics and video) I am having to think about how my audience is perceiving what I am putting into the comic and/or video and how I should set it up so that it is most useful to my audience. I find that planning out my ideas for a comic is very difficult for me. I have never really been into comics and trying to make them interesting is hard for me.
I think I am able to use this technology to communicate ideas about my new literacy fairly well. It is difficult to make the comic in a way that is effective for learning but I think when it is done it is something that students would be very interested in looking at and even more interested in making. My technology limits my ability to teach about my literacy only in that I would want to have links to specific websites that are interactive instead of just typing them and then the viewer would have to go find that website.
Students in my placement classroom would need to be able to listen to directions from a teacher, possibly read directions on a piece of paper instructing them to go to a certain website. They would need to be able to once on the website possibly create a user name, and read even more about how the technology works and what the features of it are. In the case of both a video and a comic they would have to come up with a story, plot, or idea of what they are going to portray in the comic or video. Perhaps they would make up a story, or have it be some sort of informational tool like how I am going to use it.
No comments:
Post a Comment