Burgess, J., Medaille, A. ACRL Visual Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education. Association of College and Research Libraries. 2011 http://www.acrl.org/ala/mgrps/divs/acrl/standards/visualliteracy.pdf
Education
is always changing in order to fit social needs. Currently, our society is
highly visual and has allowed almost anyone to create visual media. However,
being able to be in contact with all of that information does not mean that
people are critical about what they are looking at. There is a need for
teaching people these skills, especially with a visually oriented global
society.
Students
are expected to use visuals and most of the time it is taken for granted that
they will use them appropriately. However there is a strong need to prepare
students on also doing research, interpretation, analysis and evaluation of
these visual materials. Showing them about visual information etiquette is also
a need. Although there is a great need to teach this, there are no standards
showing learning outcomes around visual literacy. The Visual Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education has
already determined that there is a gap and has provided tools for teachers
meanwhile. As teachers we need to develop classes that meet social needs and
even trends to help students be prepared.
We
should learn to treat visual information not just as a picture or the extra, it
is now an essential tool to learn and it is very powerful. In my classes I like
to incorporate lots of visuals because in science and math having abstract
ideas makes concepts difficult to understand. Once you make them part of their
daily lives it becomes easier to understand and remember. However, I still
believe there is a lot of work to be done, in my case I have to incorporate
media and visual etiquette to my lessons.
According
to the ACRL Visual Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education having
visual literacy incorporated in the classroom is a group effort. I agree with
this idea, I believe that department and level teams should work having
specific visuals incorporated in the curriculum just as it is done with the
other information. This allows having better structure, organization and cross
curricular information. At my school librarians are also a key point to develop
this. There are several visuals and media provided by them that should be
incorporated in the lessons.
I agree with you in regard to which we must look not only to integrate the use of images as such but really empower our students the skills needed to learn to find, use, interpret, analyze and create images that will facilitate self-construction of their own knowledge and prepare them with the skills to meet the challenges of this new era.
ResponderEliminarTania Hinojosa
I like very much that you focus your reflections on teachers role. We are the first ones who require to acquire the technological skills so we can empower our students in their learning process. You made me reflect that we also not only need to get the skills, but to know how to use them for the best in an educational setting. This is our challenge as educators.
ResponderEliminar