I was fortunate to be asked to be a special guest contributor by the moderators of #SatChatOC, a fantastic twitter community that get together for their chat at 10.30 AEST on Saturdays. Since I was able to choose the theme and lead the conversation, it had to be visual literacy.

The six questions I floated to the group…
1. What is your definition of ‘visual literacy’?
2. In this ‘visual world and media-saturated environment’, do we place enough importance on visual literacy in education?
3. Children learn to read images before words, but often explicit teaching of visual literacy stops as soon as a child learns to read. Why?
4. Where are the opportunities for you to incorporate visual literacy in the classroom?
5. Do you see a disconnect between ‘consuming’ skills and the ability to create in your students?
6. Have advances in technology redefined your ideas about what it means to teach literacy in the classroom?

It was a great opportunity to learn from educators from around the world, and the thought-provoking tweet-fest has been recorded in the Storify below. I also thought I would share some of the resources highlighted during the session, so here they are…
 
 

 

Visual Literacy Array based on ACRL’s Visual Literacy Standards by D. Hattwig, K. Bussert, and A. Medaille
Copyright 2013 The Johns Hopkins University Press. This image first appeared in PORTAL: LIBRARIES AND THE ACADEMY, Volume 13, Issue 1, January 2013, p. 75.

 
 
And one last resource…
 

Go to this link to see the interactive image and access further resources: http://www.visual-literacy.org/pages/documents.htm