Visual Literacy

What's your working definition of visual literacy?

Keith Lightbody defines visual literacy as: the ability to understand and produce visual messages.

Some Implications:
(1) visual skills can be learned
(2) visual skills are not usually isolated from other sensory skills
(3) teachers can provide appropriate learning environments and materials
(4) teachers can allow students to create their own visual messages
(5) digital literacies (e.g. computer, visual, audio, print reading, information, multi-media) each require different skills
(6) competency in one literacy does not necessarily transfer to another
(7) visual arts can affect student emotions and aid understanding
(8) students need to learn how to recognize and respond to visual and print messages of humor, irony and metaphor
(9) students require guidance to distinguish between factual and fictional visual representations.

Visual Literacy according to NCREL :

Visual literacy is the ability to interpret, use, appreciate, and create images and video using both conventional and 21st century media in ways that advance thinking, decision making, communication, and learning.Students Who Are Visually Literate:

Have Working Knowledge of Visuals Produced or Displayed through Electronic Media

• Understand basic elements of visual design, technique, and media.

• Are aware of emotional, psychological, physiological, and cognitive influences in perceptions of visuals.

• Comprehend representational, explanatory, abstract, and symbolic images.

Apply Knowledge of Visuals in Electronic Media

• Are informed viewers, critics, and consumers of visual information.

• Are knowledgeable designers, composers, and producers of visual information.

• Are effective visual communicators.

• Are expressive, innovative visual thinkers and successful problem solvers.

  Visualization tools enable students to make their thinking visible in all academic areas. Students are able to build interactive models to test theories in real time and use graphics to display results. Graphic organizers and visual mapping tools enable students to make sense of complex subjects by exploring linkages, relationships, similarities, and differences between phenomena, and visually representing interplay among system components.
  
  Visual literacy according to the Oakland Museum of CA is the ability to understand communications composed of visual images as well as being able to use visual imagery to communicate to others. Students become visually literate by the practice of visual encoding (expressing their thoughts and ideas in visual form) and visual decoding (translating and understanding the meaning of visual imagery).