Visual literacy and design


flickr photo shared by gato-gato-gato under a Creative Commons ( BY-NC-ND ) license

What is visual literacy?


What’s all the excitement about it?
Communications, and visuals in particular, is a field that I’m really fond of. I’m a typical visual learner. I need to see in order to understand, remember, learn…


As a French teacher, I use images a lot. I can’t teach without visuals, pictures, drawings or symbols (The Noun project is one of my favourites).
Two years ago, I took a “Speech and Language support for 5-11s” course. The aim is to encourage children’s communication skills. I learned that studies suggest that our minds are organised and more prepared to receive information through the visual route rather than any other sense and that over 50% of messages are conveyed through non-verbal communication. I also learned that our memory works much better when we use a multi-sensory approach. John Medina explained that and much more in Brain Rules.



Why is visual literacy important?


Nowadays with the new technology and the fast pace in the world we live in, this is so obvious why we should teach visual literacy. We’re surrounded by so many pictures, images, photos and symbols that help us understand communications. We need to learn how to decipher, to read them and write them.
Visual literacy is not for art classroom anymore. Frank W. Baker said in Media Literacy in the K-12 classroom:



Today, the need for visual literacy has spread to other disciplines. Because so much information is communicated visually, it is more important than ever that our students learn what it means to be visually literate. Those who create visual images (such as photographs) do so with a purpose in mind, using certain techniques. In order to “read” or analyse an image, the audience (our students) must be able to understand the purpose and recognize the techniques. Just like media literacy, visual literacy is about analysing and creating messages. Images can be used to influence and persuade, so it is incumbent upon educators to learn how to teach with and about images and to help our students understand the language of photography.

Reading pictures takes different forms, different levels and everybody does it. Here are just two examples. Early readers start by reading pictures of a book before reading the words. My K1 students do that and they are pretending being fluent reader!




[caption id="attachment_243" align="aligncenter" width="225"]Photo by M.Brutel Photo by M.Brutel[/caption]

It can also help us to understand the world we live in. In any case, what it’s for me important to bear in mind is the reason why we need to be visual literate. It’s because we’re developing important life skills such a curiosity, creativity, empathy, initiative and multi-disciplinary thinking as explained in this incredible video “The adaptable mind” from Let it ripple.
[vimeo]https://vimeo.com/133190364[/vimeo]



From being a visual literate to a designer


Having said that I know that Course 3 is really going to push me out of my comfort zone. If I do use a lot of visuals, I do that offline… Designing using new technology is something that I have been trying to avoid to do.


While readings for this course, I have found several articles of interest. Some helps us to understand how we read on a screen Others give us rules to follow when we design a blog or a web page. Design better with CRAP is the first step that I’ve (tried) applied in my blog post.


As for the main page of my blog, I have read “A visual guide to what colors communicate”.


As you can see on the before/after screenshot, I also created a menu to organise the blog posts and to navigate between courses.




[caption id="attachment_226" align="alignnone" width="300"]Before Before[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_227" align="alignnone" width="300"]After After[/caption]

 

That’s a work-in-progress! I now have to fill in the “About me” page and to come up with a real name for this blog!

Comments

  1. Rebekah MadridFebruary 1, 2016 at 3:43 AM

    I think language teacher often "get it" when talking about visual literacy. They know that when communicating, visuals can both support and add to a message. I would love to know how you use the Noun Project .

    Thank you so much for showing how your blogs have changed! Go back and look at your first post and compare to this one. It's awesome!

    ReplyDelete
  2. blairlockhartFebruary 1, 2016 at 5:32 AM

    Hi Magali,
    Hope you had a good break & are ready to get back into COETAILing. I really like the image you use at the top of your post. A good example of how an image portrays emotion & feeling as well as information.
    My main subject area is Economics so I use a lot of visuals, but they are of a different style to what is referred to in the readings this week. Even so, I agree with a lot of your sentiments about the importance and effectiveness of visuals in teaching. It has got me seriously thinking about my tendency to commit 'death by power points', well Google Slides more like it. I also am no digital design expert, so like yourself will be pushing myself. For my 1st effort to improve the visual appeal of my teaching materials, I used Google Drawings, which is very simple to use, although somewhat limited with fonts & image manipulation. I had a look at some of the suggested tools for creating graphics, but as yet, haven't found anything overly user friendly. If you have any luck drop me a line.
    All the best on Course 3 & I'll look forward to coming back & visiting your blog again soon.
    Blair

    ReplyDelete
  3. Magali BrutelFebruary 2, 2016 at 8:44 AM

    Hello Blair,
    Thank you for reading my blog and for your comments!
    Yes, I found this picture interesting too as it’s a good example of reading a picture when some things are actually not on it!
    Re tools for creating graphics, I have tried Piktochart, easel.ly ( on a ipad, as I thought that creating with my fingers would help…but it drove me nuts!) and Canva. I finally worked with Canva to create an infographic but it took me like two weeks.
    I didn’t know Google drawings but if it’s simple it’s good too. Have you tried to add some icons instead of words? In that case, you should have a look at the noun project website.
    Thank you
    Magali

    ReplyDelete
  4. Magali BrutelFebruary 2, 2016 at 8:49 AM

    Thanks Rebekah!
    I also think that my blog is much more readable. I still find it difficult though to have an idea of how the post would look like while writing it. And yet I use the preview a lot.
    I mainly use the noun project as a dictionary pictures + words, and in particular concepts/ideas words like verbs or emotions. It works wonderfully with older students. It must be too conceptual for the youngest. I’m still thinking of creating task plans for my students to help them working independently. And as I said in my blog post, it’s mainly offline as I created work sheets or vocabulary sheets.
    Thank you
    Magali

    ReplyDelete
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