Visual Literacy and the Internet in the Classroom

How can visual literacy and the use of the Internet impact the teaching and learning process in the classroom? What are some visual-thinking strategies you would like to use in your classroom? What role do you want the Internet play in your classroom?

Visual literacy in the classroom allows for students to become proficient in comprehending, understanding the meaning behind, and communicating through the use of images and multimedia. The internet is an essential resource for delivering such images and multimedia to students in the K-12 classroom. Graphics, images, photographs, and videos have become increasingly used and needed in our society. Teaching students to “read” these images and videos will allow them to develop their critical thinking abilities and make smart decisions based on visual literacy. I feel that with guided instruction, visual literacy can impart a substantial impact on the teaching and learning process in the classroom. Teachers will discover exciting and motivational ways to teach rigorous material while students feel as though they can learn and stay entertained at the same time.

There exist quite a few visual thinking strategies that I would like to use in my classroom. Charts and timelines are two great examples of visual literacy. Timelines present a fantastic strategy for aiding students in learning the chronological order of historical events and help students to piece history together and construct their knowledge of specific historical events and contents. Charts can be used to represent data for the visual learner to help make sense of lists of numbers. These strategies along with using images of dancers to display body alignment are all ways in which I would like to use visual literacy strategies in the classroom. With the internet, I am able to locate such graphics, charts, timelines, and images to use in the classroom. Students can benefit from the internet in the classroom in finding their own representations of concepts and ideas that adhere to the guidelines of visual literacy.

The video below displays a set of images creating to spark discussion in a visually-based lesson.