. . INFORMATION LITERACY : VISUAL LITERACY: Life on the Screen: Visual Literacy in Education . . Life on the Screen: Visual Literacy in EducationThe visionary filmmaker argues that students must learn a new language of image and sound in order to succeed.
By James Daly Edutopia http://www.edutopia.org/lucas-visual-literacy . . What do students need to be learning that they're not? .They need to understand a new language of expression. The way we are educating is based on nineteenth-century ideas and methods. Here we are, entering the twenty-first century, and you look at our schools and ask, 'Why are we doing things in this ancient way?' Our system of education is locked in a time capsule. You want to say to the people in charge, 'You're not using today's tools! Wake up!'
. What would you change? .We must teach communication comprehensively, in all its forms. Today we work with the written or spoken word as the primary form of communication. But we also need to understand the importance of graphics, music, and cinema, which are just as powerful and in some ways more deeply intertwined with young people's culture. We live and work in a visually sophisticated world, so we must be sophisticated in using all the forms of communication, not just the written word.
.When people talk to me about the digital divide, I think of it not being so much about who has access to what technology as who knows how to create and express themselves in this new language of the screen. If students aren't taught the language of sound and images, shouldn't they be considered as illiterate as if they left college without being able to read or write?
.Unfortunately, most learning institutions find that idea very difficult to swallow. They consider the various forms of nonwritten communication as some type of therapy or art, something that is not relevant to the everyday life of a student. This is wrong.
.You can measure verbal or math skills by determining whether a student is right or wrong on a test -- in other words, whether they're learning or not. With visual communication, some might argue it's trickier to measure progress and competency.
.But there are rules for telling a story visually that are just as important as grammatical rules or math terms, and you can test people on them as well. There is grammar in film, there is grammar in graphics, there is grammar in music, just like there are rules in math that can be taught. For instance, what emotion does the color red convey? What about blue? What does a straight line mean? How about a diagonal line?
.In music, if you want somebody to feel sad, what kind of a chord do you use? A minor chord? A major chord? We know that a fast rhythm makes you feel one way and a slow rhythm makes you feel another. If you want to get somebody excited, you use one kind of rhythm; if you want people to feel important, you use another. If you're going to put together a multimedia project, you need to know that you can't have a fast rhythm track if you're talking about death. It just doesn't work. You're not communicating well.
.We also know that if you're trying to calm people down, you don't use the color red. Or, if you're trying to get people excited, you do use the color red. If you want people to be calm, you use a flat line; if you want them to be excited, you use a jagged or a diagonal line.
.Knowing these things is as important as knowing what a verb and a subject are, what a period and an exclamation point mean.
. How do we bring these lessons into the classroom? . snip . Additional Topics Covered in This Article: .What's at stake if this understanding doesn't make its way into the classroom?
Some might say you're being too idealistic, that the schools don't have enough money for pencils. Shouldn't we focus on that first?
Where did your passion for education come from? What kind of student were you growing up?
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