Thursday, March 10, 2011
Knowledge Through Visual Information
The power of an image is found in its ability to tell a story without a single letter of text. Visual information can be a support structure for content inquiry and help the student to associate images with complex ideas. When the image is a source of questioning, the use of graphic images can be a source of deeper inquiry. By asking the students to look at an image of an event and asking them what is happening, the student is forced to think of interpretation. The student becomes a history detective and puts into play all the information the student has as background knowledge to develop a visual story from the image given. Even when the interpretation is not correct the student has been acting upon known and inferred knowledge to generate a theory. Then the student can dig deeper to prove or disprove their assumption. This would appear a good strategy for deeper inquiry.
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I love your idea of students becoming a detective when given images. I believe images are a huge part of students lives today. Look at all the images in advertising. Advertising is all around each and every one of us. Visual learning should be something that they are used to based on technology. Now we just have to see how we as teachers can incorporate it appropriately for our content area.
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