I think visual literacy is a much over-looked skill. I think we assume that since these kids have grown up with screens they just know how to understand what they are looking at. I know I will use some of the knowledge I learned about fonts and colors to help my students create better presentations. I will also create better presentations and videos and regular graphics because of this information that has been shared with me. I love the dual coding concept and can see how it makes great sense.

I can’t really flip my classroom due to homework restrictions, but I do create a lot of lessons that my students work on in class and those lessons use a lot of visuals. I have become more aware of what I want them to get from the visuals so that I select more carefully and create more purposefully.

We have been tweeting a fair amount and sometimes I send pictures. I can see the power of the visual in social media. My class saw a picture of a cozy area in another class’s room and now they have been meeting and measuring and problem-solving to try to figure out how to create a similar one in our room. After reading the Instagram sites, I’m seriously considering creating a class account so we can share our world through pictures. I’ll let you know if we go live with that.

Taking pictures or video, sketching designs or results all fit naturally into PBL. In fact, having a visual record of what you have done so far or what you hope to create makes perfect sense.  The expression, “Back to the drawing board” came from problem-solvers using visuals.

You didn’t specifically ask for this connection since we’ve just started the assessment course, but I can see how visuals would work as assessments. I was very taken with the high school boy’s video and think he made many valid points. Teachers hesitate to assign or accept these projects because they are more difficult to assess, but in my mind, they are so much more authentic than many paper/pencil tests.

I was extremely busy for these two weeks of the visual literacy course, but I learned a ton anyway. I look forward to working more in the apps and sites and to train myself to look at fonts and colors with a new perspective.