As for your second postscript, that question came up in some other comment thread awhile back. Maybe yours again but I think it was one of my x-chromosome readers.

It freaks me way out, though, that visual literacy isn’t taught. No one even broached it in my otherwise exceptional teacher ed program. It freaks me out because this year I’ve seen the difference it makes. It won’t break a good teacher but it’ll ruin a bad one and it can propel a good one to greatness. I swear.

rebuttal? no, no place for that. i’m a keyboard masher compared to you, dan.

i think you hit the nail on the head with the two major difficulties caused by my ambitious attempt.

1. “images = some of the most difficult to play with.” i did what i could with google earth, to find images that reduced the contrast, but the difference in colors between each slide was just so great that i couldn’t easily find one consistent text color. thus the hedging of bets.

2. “information density is pretty high.” yeah, i know that, but that was kind of part of the complicated story i was trying to tell. i tried my best to group the text for each slide in a similar spot, but due to item 1 – the widely varying colors in each slide – that was too hard to do.

dan, i think what you did on the final example, the dark vignette, does an excellent job of reducing the first problem. also creates more consistency between each visual image, while making it easier to organize the visual information.

the fourth slide – hmm, what could come next. i’ll play around with it.

thanks thanks thanks dan for this. i learned a lot!

-jp

Postscript1: “moxy”? “moxy” sounds like something people were vaccinated for in the 1930s. think my grandpa would’ve called it gumption. (my grandma just calls me a smarta$$.)

Postscript2: why would teachers NOT read down this far? visual literacy is crucial for teaching ANY subject. are students being taught visual literacy in classes other than technology and/or the occasional forward-thinking teacher? are TEACHERS being taught about this?

Us math teachers get bummed at professional development seminars discussing the importance of literacy across all content areas. We give the notion our grudging respect but find it trickier to implement than do the plucky keynote speakers.

But visual literacy, there’s somethin’ I can rally behind, no matter the context.

Expressing statistics through visuals in math & statistics & history.
Expressing emotions and ideas through visuals in literature & language.
Expressing relationships visually in science.

I do video work when I don’t teach. I’ve found the overlap between structuring a good video and structuring a good lesson to be vast. Last year was the clearest I’ve ever taught and, not uncoincidentally, two nights ago I debuted a video which was my clearest self-expression. Exciting times to have irrelevant interests.