Visual Teaching Alliance

June 2009 Blog Posts (13)

Moving Toward Visual Literacy: Photography as a Language of Teacher Inquiry

Introduction

During the past two decades in the United States, teacher inquiry has become a dominant focus of contemporary early childhood teacher education programs (Hill, Stremmel, & Fu, 2004; Hubbard & Power, 2003; Burnaford, Fischer, & Hobson, 2001; Moran, 2002; Fosnot, 1989). Teacher inquiry is characterized by "both new and experienced teachers [who] pose problems, identify discrepancies between theories and practices, challenge common routines, draw on the… Continue

Added by Timothy Gangwer on June 30, 2009 at 9:41am — No Comments

Will Video Games Reshape Education?

Scientists call it the next great discovery, a way to captivate students so much they will spend hours learning on their own. It's the new vision of video games. The Federation of American Scientists--which typically weighs in on matters of nuclear weaponry and government secrecy--recently declared that video games can redefine education. Capping a year of study, the group has called for federal research into how the addictive pizzazz of video games can be converted into serious learning tools… Continue

Added by Timothy Gangwer on June 29, 2009 at 9:32am — No Comments

Thoughts On Visual Teaching

Many people think verbally. The spoken language flows through the thought processes like a typewriter creating a story. All people think visually, continually translating words and ideas it pictures so that concepts and thoughts surface. In other words, we all understand, or decode, the visual language, but a true visual thinker has nonlinear thought, as if to be exercising cognition through computer simulation, then transforming the data into animation, or encoding. Thoughts become movies,… Continue

Added by Timothy Gangwer on June 25, 2009 at 4:30pm — No Comments

A Personal Story

Friends’ Gate

I had heard so many negative things concerning a new student prior to his enrollment that I chose not to review his records when they arrived. I felt that because he did not have to sift through my old baggage, perhaps I should not sift through his. I decided we would begin on unbiased, neutral grounds. I did choose, however, to read his medical and family background.

Jonathan was born in 1980 in Houston. After his mother abandoned him, his maternal… Continue

Added by Timothy Gangwer on June 23, 2009 at 10:44am — 1 Comment

Visual Thinking in Education (Visual-Verbal Language in Learning & Teaching)

Visual Representations: Literal and Symbolic

When discussing the communication of visual meaning it is useful to distinguish between literal representations that are intended to resemble the object they portray, and symbolic representations. { These categories can also be labeled using other terms, such as realistic and abstract, respectively. } Of course, there is a continuous range between literal and symbolic, and many pedagogically useful pictures are a complex mixture… Continue

Added by Timothy Gangwer on June 22, 2009 at 10:48am — No Comments

7 Things You Should Know About "Google Earth"

Scenario

As part of a course on U.S. history, Alexander is writing a paper about the Lewis and Clark expedition, focusing on a critical decision. When the party arrived at a fork in the river in June 1805, the crew believed the north fork was the proper route; Captains Lewis and Clark thought the south course would get them to the Pacific Ocean. Alexander looks at the area on Google Earth, which helps him understand the geography of this part of Montana.

Alexander… Continue

Added by Timothy Gangwer on June 19, 2009 at 11:27am — No Comments

History of Interest in the Visual-Spatial Learner

Analysis of psychometric patterns and clinical observations led to the development of the visual-spatial construct in 1982. The paper, “The Visual-Spatial Learner” received positive responses from clients and from students at the University of Denver and North Carolina State University. In July, 1987, it was presented to an international audience under the title “Global Learners” at the Seventh World Conference on Gifted and Talented Children. Four months later, it was incorporated into a model… Continue

Added by Timothy Gangwer on June 16, 2009 at 9:44am — No Comments

Visual Skills in the Learning Process

There are some specific required visual skills that one must have in order to have effective reading and learning abilities. With proper diagnostics, a visual learning obstacle, in most cases, can easily be transformed by working on a specific task to improve the specific functionality that the brain employs to perform a task. This article is the first in a two-part series that talks about the visual process that occurs while one is learning and identifies some physical symptoms that can… Continue

Added by Timothy Gangwer on June 10, 2009 at 1:54pm — No Comments

Language Cues Provide 'Glue' For Visual Learning In Children

Language cues can provide the "glue" that helps fasten certain visual patterns into small children's memories, according to results to be presented by a Johns Hopkins University graduate student at the 17th annual meeting of the American Psychological Society, held May 26-29 in Los Angeles.

This new data provide insight into the long-debated question of whether language affects thought.

Doctoral candidate Banchiamlack Dessalegn and her mentor, Barbara Landau, the Dick and… Continue

Added by Timothy Gangwer on June 9, 2009 at 10:11am — No Comments

Visual Learning, Visual Language and Photography

Visual Learning arises from the use of visual language, where linguistic meanings, information and sense are embedded in an image, rather than a text, and where the image is capable of being read, both in terms of the authors intent and in terms of the viewers own conditioned perceptions. Because a photograph is liberated (at least to some extent) from the constraints of a written text, it enables both author and viewer to encode and decode meanings in a very direct and often intuitive way.… Continue

Added by Timothy Gangwer on June 8, 2009 at 10:53am — No Comments

How to Speak Out (Visually) at Your Library

What is Information Literacy?

Information literacy allows users to become life long learners. The American Library Association (ALA) defines information literacy as a “set of abilities requiring individuals to recognize when information is needed and have the ability to locate, evaluate, and use effectively the needed information.” (2000) These skills include the ability to:

- Establish the amount and level of information required

- Access the information… Continue

Added by Timothy Gangwer on June 5, 2009 at 9:44am — No Comments

Visual Literacy: An Institutional Imperative

Academics have a long history of claiming and defending the superiority of verbal over visual for representing knowledge. By dismissing imagery as mere decoration, they have upheld the sanctity of print for academic discourse. However, in the last decade, digital technologies have broken down the barriers between words and pictures, and many of these same academics are now willing to acknowledge that melding text with image constructs new meaning, and some may even go so far as to admit that… Continue

Added by Timothy Gangwer on June 4, 2009 at 10:07am — No Comments

Studies Shed Light On Multi-Tasking, Video Games And Learning

Los Angeles, California - As technology has played a bigger role in our lives, our skills in critical thinking and analysis have declined, while our visual skills have improved, according to research by Patricia Greenfield, UCLA distinguished professor of psychology and director of the Children's Digital Media Center, Los Angeles.

Learners have changed as a result of their exposure to technology, says Greenfield, who analyzed more than 50 studies on learning and technology, including… Continue

Added by Timothy Gangwer on June 1, 2009 at 9:29am — No Comments