Visual & Media Literacy

Many educators know how to teach with media; unfortunately, not many know how to teach about media.

                                                     Frank W Baker, Media Literacy in the K-12 Classroom


We are shaped by our tools
Marshall McCluhan 

Rationale

Media literacy is a set of skills that anyone can learn. Just as literacy is the ability to read and write, media literacy refers to the ability to access, analyze, evaluate and create media messages of all kinds. These are essential skills in today's world. Today, many people get most of their information through complex combinations of text, images and sounds. We need to be able to navigate this complex media environment, to make sense of the media messages that bombard us every day, and to express ourselves using a variety of media tools and technologies. Media literate youth and adults are better able to decipher the complex messages we receive from television, radio, newspapers, magazines, books, billboards, signs, packaging, marketing materials, video games, recorded music, the Internet and other forms of media. They can understand how these media messages are constructed, and discover how they create meaning – usually in ways hidden beneath the surface. People who are media literate can also create their own media, becoming active participants in our media culture. 

 There is a biological basis for visual communication.

The auditory nerve transmits sound to the brain and is composed of about 30,000 fibers. Contrast that with the optic nerve which sends visual signals to the brain through 1 million fibers. Basically, you’ve got a dial-up connection from the ear to the brain and broadband from the eye to the brain.
                                                                                                                                                                                               David Jakes

Students Who Are Visually Literate:

Have Working Knowledge of Visuals Produced or Displayed through Electronic Media

  • Understand basic elements of visual design, technique, and media.

  • Are aware of emotional, psychological, physiological, and cognitive influences in perceptions of visuals.

  • Comprehend representational, explanatory, abstract, and symbolic images.

Apply Knowledge of Visuals in Electronic Media

  • Are informed viewers, critics, and consumers of visual information.

  • Are knowledgeable designers, composers, and producers of visual information.

  • Are effective visual communicators.

  • Are expressive, innovative visual thinkers and successful problem solvers.

Exercises to strengthen visual intelligence:

  • Make diagrams and maps
  • Estimate distances
  • Visualize scenarios and goals you want to attain
  • Visualize geometric structures, rotate them in your mind, sit inside them, give them colors
  • Develop diagrams and visual representations of problems
  • Create and watch videos!
  • Use computer aided graphics
  • Take photographs 
  • Practice orienteering with maps 
  • Use visual posters, flash cards and symbols 
  • Highlight information with color 
  • Merge art with other subjects
  • Feel free to doodle when studying or thinking 
  • Imagine yourself within three dimensional environments

 Media literacy skills can help children, youth and adults:
• Understand how media messages create meaning
• Identify who created a particular media message
• Recognize what the media maker wants us to believe or do
• Name the "tools of persuasion" used
• Recognize bias, spin, misinformation and lies
• Discover the part of the story that's not being told
• Evaluate media messages based on our own experiences, beliefs and values
• Create and distribute our own media messages
• Become advocates for change in our media system
 
 
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