Is Visuality the New Literacy?

Kevin Kelly’s recent piece “Becoming Screen Literate” (NY Times 11/23/08)  details our transition from text literacy to screen literacy. This movement has great implication for education. Information in our schools is organized in text-based lineal fashion. Our students live in a mosaic, imaged-based world in which visuality has become the new literacy.

Screens are everywhere. YouTube videos and Flickr images have become rich databases of component images and videos for yet new mash-ups and user-generated content. Kelly predicts this visual content will soon surpass our linguistic content as new tools will enable users to search, copy, modify and reassemble visual content with near word-processor efficiency.
 
Kelly writes, 

The rich databases of component images form a new grammar for moving images… After all, this is how authors work. We dip into a finite set of established words, called a dictionary, and reassemble these found words into articles, novels and poems that no one has ever seen before. The joy is recombining them. Indeed it is a rare author who is forced to invent new words. Even the greatest writers do their magic primarily by rearranging formerly used, commonly shared ones. What we do now with words, we’ll soon do with images

Below a TimeTube mashup creates a genealogy of most popular user-generated videos tagged Global Warming. 

Visual Literacy: How Do Your Students Share Their Thinking?

The perceived audience / purpose for most student work is the teacher / because it was assigned. Learning becomes more meaningful when students are given chances to share their thinking with more authenticity. It's as simple as adding an audience to an assignment. Example: "How would you explain your solution to younger students?" This also opens the door to more relevant self evaluation. "Did my presentation suit my audience and purpose?"

Periodic-table
Visual literacy is the ability to evaluate, apply, or create conceptual visual representations. Visual-Literacy.org has assembled a collection of visualizations in as a periodic table. Mouse over each element and a sample pops up. The examples range from simple to complex and they provide a vast array of approaches beyond the overused Venn diagram or T-chart. 

A pdf of the table is also available. On another page you can group the visualization methods by your criteria and  find background information for a specific visualization method via Google Images and Wikipedia

Transforming Information Flow in School Libraries

Schools have long functioned as information gatekeepers. The flow of information in most classrooms is simply teacher > student > teacher. Many whole group "discussions" are dominated by teachers playing "guess what I'm thinking" and feeling the need to validate every student response. Picture the economics teacher in Ferris Bueller's Day Off . "Anyone.. Anyone..?" Much of the rest of schools – textbooks, libraries, labs – support the idea that the adults have the information and will ration it out to students in a measured flow. 

We lament that many students aren't motivated in class. I suspect that's because our students are becoming accustomed to a more horizontal and open information flow. They have an ever growing expectation for more control and functionality over the information they access, save, repurpose and share.

How long do we think public schools will be able to monopolize the flow of academic information? Look around us and see that the traditional information gatekeeper  model is failing. Chicago Tribune? Layoffs at NPR? Christian Science Monitor going to web only? Shouldn't we be rethinking the information architecture in our schools?

In his recent article, "Flip This Library: School Libraries Need a Revolution" School Library Journal (11/1/2008),  David Loertscher,  calls for a  a revolution in thinking about the form and function of information in the school library. He envisions a 

"learning commons – both a physical and a virtual space that’s staffed not just by teacher-librarians but also by other school specialists … such as literacy coaches, teacher technologists, teacher-librarians, art teachers, music teachers, and P.E. teachers…"

The main objective of the open commons is to showcase the school’s best teaching and learning practices… a typical classroom assignment and library Web site are examples of one-way communication. Adults tell learners what to do, how to do it, and where to find information. But in the new learning commons, homework assignments and library Web sites offer two-way communication.  

… Having done that, note that you have created a revolution in thinking. Directive adults have been transformed into coaches; direct teaching has been transformed into collaborative inquiry. 

Sidebar from the article below. 

SLJNov08_FlipLib_SBbox