Visual literacy and the internet can be helpful instructional tools that positively impact the learning process of the classroom. According to Prensky (2001), video game play has now surpassed both newspaper and magazine reading among young males, the average student send 200,00 emails, and the average teenager spend 22,000 hours watching TV. It is evident that students are learning from visual sources. The 21st Century Skills of 2003 list visual literacy as one of the key skills for the future. If educators are going to engage students in learning, educators need to create opportunities to include visual literacy and the internet in the classroom to promote critical thinking, decision making, and communication skills. The options to include visual literacy and the internet in the classroom are numerous and include but are not limited to videography, web quests, virtual field trips, digital story boards, weblogs, discussion boards, and live news clips. Using visuals and the internet can help learners develop spatial intelligences and analogical thinking (Abersek 2008).
One visual thinking strategy that colleagues proposed was using videography. I have never used videography in may classroom because I am not an expert on taking videos and downloading them to the computer. After reading some colleagues ideas I feel that I could try a couple of strategies. One idea I have it to let out student interview fellow students about mental illness. After looking at the film we could reflect on what the film reveals about people's perception of mental illness. It would be interesting to see how accurate people's perceptions of mental illness are, recognize stereotypes people have about mental illness, the language people use to talk about the mentally ill, and the attitude presented. Then my students could make their own videos to educate people about the mentally ill.
Besides using videography, I would like to try to use virtual field trips in my classrooms. In the article Virtual Field Trips Open Doors for Multimedia Lesson by Kathleen Manso, a teacher, Scott Mandel gives testimony on how displays of Egyptian mummies and treasures of the British Museum virtual field trip inspired him and his students. I would like to use virtual field trips to provide my students with visuals on the Palace of Versailles when we discuss the French Revolution. So far, I have found that Homeworkspot.com http://www.homeworkspot.com/fieldtrip/versailles.htm offers two websites that provide images of the Chateau to students.
As I went through this module, I realized I would like to expand my role of internet in the classroom. I would like to use the internt more often as a communication tool to connect my students to government officials, students outside of our school, and students abroad. One idea for using the internet I have it to use Skype for Project Citizen. The purpose of Project Citizen to to allow students to identify a problem in their community, research the problems, identify possible solutions and then create a public policy. Skype would allow my students a unique opportunity to have interviews with government officials and local, state, and national level. Currently, my government students are working on researching and developing a public policy on youth obesity. It is too costly for our students to travel to our state capital to interact with state representatives. It is too costly for our students to get face-to-face interaction with our state representatives. It would also be helpful if my students could pitch their proposals to other teens to see what their response to the proposals may be. Clearly, the internet provides a diverse array of opportunities for learning.
References:
Abersek, M.K. (2008. Visual literacy-One of the 21st Century literacies for science teaching and learning. Problems of Education in the 21t Century, 5, 9-17.
For an awesome video on visual literacy check this out: Visual Literacy Video
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