Images

Images are everywhere we look. This text type has become one of the most prolific forms of communication in our media-saturated society. Once upon a time language and literacy comprised primarily of written and spoken text, and therefore in order to be literate, one was only required to have a basic set of skills that enabled them to interpret and communicate with both.  The incorporation of visual, aural, and textual elements has created a language comprised of multimodal elements, and therefore what it means to be literate in the 21^st century has changed dramatically (The New Media Consortium, 2005). Just like spoken and written text, images require a specific set of literacy skills that enable one to decode and make meaning from it. Visual literacy encompasses more than one level of skill, and requires the viewer to critically examine the image, gather information and ideas contained within it, place them into a context and then determine their validity within this context (Thibult and Wilbert, n.d).

Critical literacy skills should be developed from a young age as texts (particularly images in this case) often entail hidden meanings and underlying messages that are aimed to provoke deep thought from the viewer. Visual literacy as Thibult and Wilbert (n.d) state is the “ability to read images, to see, understand and ultimately create and communicate graphically”. Luke and Freebody ‘Four resource model’ provides an excellent framework that could be used within the classroom to encourage higher order thinking, and develop those visual literacy skills.  

After just completing an assignment of the sexualisation of children through images, I realised another important reason for developing such skills is because they provide the opportunity to develop children’s critical social literacy using images in children’s popular culture. Taylor (2010, 56) believes that “early childhood educators can use children’s popular culture as a resource for building young children’s critical social literacy’. 

Developing critical media literacy skills will enable young children to be equipped with the knowledge needed to analyse, interpret and reflect upon the content available within a highly media-complex society that exposes children to adult concepts at a young age. Media exposure is inevitable in the current Western society and therefore I believe that it is far more important for educators to develop student’s visual literacy skills so that they can analyse and interpret the messages that they are trying to send, instead of trying to shelter them from them.

I love the SEE, THINK, and WONDER thinking routine outlined in this week’s readings. I think that this is a fantastic thinking strategy that could be used in the classroom when looking at images. I like the simplicity of it ‘what do you see, what do you think, what do you wonder’ because I believe that you could use it with any age year level. Using this strategy at the beginning of a unit or new topic would be a great way to motivate student interest, or at the end to encourage students to apply their new knowledge and ideas. I think that this would enable the teacher to ‘negotiate the curriculum’ as it would be a good way to gauge what the students are really interested in finding out about a particular topic.

The first technology that I used within this week’s suggestions was Voicethread. Voicethread is an online tool for having conversations around media, including videos, presentations and images. The reason that this tool appealed to me was because it was so easy to use. One of my biggest concerns with teaching in a 21^st century classroom is wasting so much time trying to learn and teach how to use the actual digital tools, that the lesson objectives are not achieved. I think that due to its simple structure, students would be able to master it quickly and therefore it could be easily embedded within the curriculum so that it becomes a tool used to reach the lesson objective and not the actual lesson objective. Here are some more reasons why I would use this in my classroom:

 -multiple ways to contribute to the conversation (text, phone, microphone, web cam, file upload).

-it is students orientated –teacher can assign a topic and then the students can pick their own content.

-provides opportunities for students to contribute who may not usually feel comfortable in a verbal face to face group discussion.

-teachers can see interactions between students that they would not usually have the time to see.

-provides students with the opportunity to become the expert as they can select content.

-it is engaging! There are multiple ways to have a discussion over a variety of content which means that multiple learning styles are being catered for –plus it is incorporating technology which is highly engaging for many 21^st century learners.

The next technology that I used was Tag Galaxy which is an online search engine used to explore word relationships, through a visual media. It is simple to use and provides a world of images from Flickr at the type of a word/words. I would use this in the classroom to:

-explore word relationships (for example if a student typed in girl they would be presented with a whole range of images. If they typed in girl + alone  a whole different set of images would be presented.

-use as a prompt for creative writing.

-encourage students to interact with the globe using an IWB.

-engage students in a guided visual search (this could take the learning to a whole new place).

The final tool that I explored was Picnik, an online image editor. I used picnik to manipulate one of their example photos displayed below. Although I am not sure that it looks any better than before, it was fun to experiment with. I think that this tool would be hard to use within a classroom to begin with as it would take some time to get used to using it  however I would use it for the following reasons:

 -explore, colour, tone and light and how this is used in imagery to create different effects and meanings.

-illustrate their work –short stories, assignments, blogs etc.

-create an artwork.

-students can add text to an image – this could be a way of providing a clue about the picture meaning or purpose.

I have truly enjoyed engaging with these digital tools as have I enjoyed rambling on about the benefits that I think that they can provide in a 21^st century classroom. So why should images be used within the classroom? I have included my personal top ten list of why I believe images should be incorporated within the classroom.

1.      To stimulate interest in a topic.

2.      To stimulate and encourage ideas.

3.      To illustrate a particular concept.

4.      As a bases for a discussion.

5.      Encourage students to create.

6.      To develop critical thinking skills.

7.      To analyse different perspectives.

8.      To develop visual literacy skills.

9.      To illustrate work: short stories, essays, book covers.

10.  To document an event: excursion, process, learning task.