Readings on "Educational Technology and Visual Learning"

     Visual imagery in the classroom allows for students to become, as Roswell says, more "self-directed" in their learning. What I think she means is that images in the classroom allow a student to drawn their own unique connections rather than only the connections offered by the teacher to the group. "Images are suspended in webs of meanings, and one reason that they are valuable is that it is possible to trace threads of meaning from elements in the images that can be used in the curriculum" (Roswell, et al. 3). Constant lectures and outlines dull the excitement of classroom learning. Visual literacy is needed to both gain new insights into old ideas and keep the well-worn subjects of a classroom fresh.

     Perhaps more importantly, visual learning turns out to be a great starting place for learners encountering an entirely new subject area. The article we read about visual learning with autistic learners was especially thought-provoking: the very order of the day and daily activities was spelled out so clearly in only a handful of visual reminders/cues. It seems that the autistic learner can be seen as a baseline for many types of learners; that is, complex ideas can first be understood by grasping the basic and fundamental parts of the ideas. This means visual aides are most helpful in fostering that initial understanding. For example, no English class reading Camus's The Stranger will grasp its significance immediately. But, through the use of basic visual aides, a student can see each part of       Camus's idea come together, from existentialism to personal responsibility to the notion of rebellion.  

I think the most important lesson to be garnered from this section visual literacy is that visual aides are exactly (and only) what they profess to be--aides to the classroom experience. The greatest objection to the use of visual literacy in the classroom is that forces the teacher to dumb down the content of the lesson; catering to the attention span of the student body, while not worrying about whether the pertinent information has taken seed. "The content classroom," writes Flint and Brozo, "reflects the idea that no content area can be understood in isolation from other content areas..." (2). Herein lies the inherent advantage in visual learning, that it forces the reader to make connections outside of the image itself. Only lazy teachers and apathetic students would settle for viewing Picasso's Guernica and addressing it tritely as a "really cool painting". There is history behind it! Visual aides are not a crutch for the classroom, but rather a method of extension.