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I see what you mean –Visual Literacy in the ELT

classroom

Lisa Phillips

International House Malta-Gozo

Different types of literacy

Different types of literacy

• digital

• media

• Information

• Technology

• Computer

(often referred to collectively under ICT)

• Visual

A definition

http://nmpborges.blogspot.com.ar/2011/03/visual-literacy-education-dissertation.html

My attempt

In the classroom, visual literacy asks students to examine, evaluate and create visual representations. It draws on critical thinking, allowing students to recognise what the text (i.e. the visual) means in order to be better prepared communicators – online, professionally, in exams, etc.

A stupidly long quote!

Visual Literacy: An E-Learning Tutorial on Visualization for Communication, Engineering and Business This e-learning site focuses on a critical, but often neglected skill for business, communication, and engineering students, namely visual literacy, or the ability to evaluate, apply, or create conceptual visual representations. After this tutorial, students should be able to evaluate advantages and disadvantages of visual representations, to improve their shortcomings, to use them to create and communicate knowledge, or to devise new ways of representing insights. The didactic approach consists of rooting visualization in its application contexts, i.e. giving students the necessary critical attitude, principles, tools and feedback to develop their own high-quality visualization formats for specific problems (problem-based learning). The students thus learn about the commonalities of good visualization in diverse areas, but also explore the specificities of visualization in their field of specialization (through real-life case studies). They will not only learn by doing, but in doing so contribute new training material for their peers to evaluate (peer learning).

http://www.visual-literacy.org/

Why’s it important?

Why’s it important?

Why’s it important?

Why’s it important?

Why’s it important?

http://losu.org/world/the-many-different-types-of-toilet-signs/2

Why’s it important?

• A picture’s worth a 1000 words

• Multi-modality

• VAK learning styles

• Special Education Needs

• New challenges for us as teachers

Awareness raising -discussion

• What kind of images are commonly used in thecoursebooks I use? How can they bediscussed/exploited/deconstructed/supplemented?

• How can I help students to become more aware of the images a) in their daily lives b) in theircoursebooks?

• How does cultural context affect the understandingof the image?

An example – CPE speaking

• CPE Examination

• Papers 4 (CUP)

Awareness raising

• Visualise different key words – compare

Awareness raising

• Visualise different key words – compare

• Learner training – ways of recording/visualising

http://www.visual-literacy.org/periodic_table/periodic_table.html

• Evaluation – what do they want us to think and why?

http://www.visual-literacy.org/periodic_table/periodic_table.html

Appropriation

• Sts create the task

• Opposing viewpoints –select images thatshow different perspectives e.g. war

• Emoticons & avatars

• Memes - 9gag, icanhas.cheezburger, mematic, memrise

Emoticons & avatars

http://www.emotasia.com/tag/asian-emoticons/

≧∇≦

http://graphicslava.com/emoticons/

Emoticons & avatarshttp://graphicslava.com/emoticons/

http://www.southparkstudios.com/avatar

http://david-crystal.blogspot.com.ar/2007/05/on-answering-asap.html

Memes

www.9gag.com

https://www.mematic.net/

Just hilarious!

http://www.quickmeme.com/Grumpy-Cat/?upcoming

Punctuation

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interrobang

≧∇≦

Appropriation

• Create the task

• Opposing viewpoints –select images thatshow different perspectives e.g. war – see“Collaborative Concept Attainment”

• Emoticons & avatars

• Memes - 9gag, mematic, memrise, mematic

• Abbreviations

• Punctuation

Autonomy

• Sts do the tasks they’ve created e.g. examtasks

• Record vocab/lesson notes in their own way

• Discuss reasons why an image was chosen and what is represents on a deeper level

• Pecha Kucha

• Show and tell/Chimping

Pecha Kucha

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fsvtV_MKXg&feature=fvwrel

http://profesorbaker.com/2011/04/02/the-sound-of-talking-pecha-kucha-eltchat-edchat-ukedchat-tesol-esl-efl-iatefl/

Autonomy

• Sts create the task e.g. exam tasks

• Record vocab/lesson notes in their own way

• Discuss reasons why an image was chosen and what is represents on a deeper level

• Pecha Kucha

• Remix e.g. history teachers

• Pinterest pages

Tech tools

• Websites – glogster, prezi, spiderscribe, iscribble (http://www.iscribble.net/), Lino (http://en.linoit.com/), Pinterest (https://www.pinterest.com/spikepinterest/visual-literacy/)

• Apps – photo caption tools (Over, Kanvas), augmented reality (Aurasma)

Some simple projects

• Haiku competition – write and illustrate

• Photo story

• “Like” stickers – Graffiti in the classroom

• Picture to poem/poem to picture

• Effective presentations

Other resources and recommended reading

• CC resourceshttp://educationaltechnologyinelt.blogspot.com.ar/2010/05/visual-literacy-flickr-fed-web-20-tools.html

• Coursebook writers such as Ceri Jones, Ben Goldstein, Jamie Keddie

• Martin Compton: A comic approach to learninghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YoHWZe8XlP4&feature=youtu.be

• Activities for teaching visual literacy

http://abud.me/digital-activities-for-visual-literacy/

• ‘A Primer of Digital Literacy’ – Donis A. Dondis

• Don’t forget the language focus

• Don’t impose your own learning preferences

• Follow their fixations

• Stay up-to-date

• Exploit, experiment and delight in what’s out there

Conclusions

Drop me a line…

• Lisa.phillips@ihmalta.com

• @ljp2010

• lisa.jayne.phillips

http://craptastical.com/thanks-day-2/