I’ve been preparing for our upcoming group presentation on Selfe’s chapter on Visual Literacy. It’s been quite interesting. I’ve found some good sites for photos and images. I’ve learned about digital storytelling. I’ve seen some good lesson plans to help students learn visual literacy.
Through all this, I can see myself using new texts in my ESL class. I think it would be very good practice for students to listen to some of the digital stories on the internet and to have to author a digital story of their own. Through each other’s digital story, students can get to know each other better and increase their sense of community.
Many ESL teachers have students make presentations to the class. Often they suggest a cultural theme. Public speaking is an important skill and needs some attention. However, visual literacy is also important.
I wonder how/if visual literacy translates between cultures? Would a Middle Eastern student have trouble understanding a digital story made by an Asian student? Hum…something to research.
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You've raised some interesting points, effie. Some visual elements are consistently interpreted across cultures, but of course, some have meanings that are culturally bound. I wonder, too, about cultures that seem to have more iconography or seem to encourage more training in art than we do.
ReplyDeleteFor instance, a graduate student from Taiwan lived with us one summer, and she worked with my son on drawing. When he was impressed with her drawing, she kind of shrugged it off, saying that she learned drawing like everyone else in school growing up and that she was surprised that the same was not true here in the States.
I've also noticed that Asian students in my classes tend to automatically dress up their blogs with images and color and that they seem to love doing websites -- inevitably paying a lot of attention to visual design.
This would be really interesting to research.
That's interesting to hear, Judy. I'll keep that in mind as I read more about visual literacy.
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