Visual literacy is a 21st Century Skill that requires students to interpret, use and create media in ways to encourage critical thinking, decision-making, communication and learning. With easy access to copyright-friendly digital images and a growing number of web 2.0 resources for manipulating them, it’s certainly worth offering students the option of conveying a message visually. Let’s take a closer look at one way to design effective learning experiences to promote visual literacy.
It’s always a good idea to start with an Essential Question to drive the learning experience. Students can work in pairs or individually to create images that answer the question visually, then all of the work can be published online for an engaging culminating activity to allow students to share knowledge and develop a deeper understanding of the whole.
BigHugeLabs is a good web 2.0 resource to start with. This free and user-friendly site has an array of tools that are perfect for jump starting classroom learning projects that focus on visual literacy. Students can use the tools without logging in to an account and they can choose from a variety of options including
|Mosaic Maker combined with Motivator|
- mosaic maker
- magazine cover
- movie poster
- Pinterest: Create a Pinterest Board specifically for the purposes of displaying and evaluating the projects.
- VoiceThread: Upload the images to VoiceThread and have students hold online conversations about the media.
- Wikispaces: Publish the images in Wikispaces and utilize the discussion feature to generate focused discussions about the individual or small group contributions.