Week Five: Visual Literacy

This week we discussed the role that visual literacy has on us every day. It is important to keep in mind that what we see is not always what really happened. In the videos we watched, we were able to see how photographers manipulate pictures to get them to be their idea or society's idea of what is beautiful. Sometimes they will add things in or take them out. Other times, they touch up the faces of the people in the photo. The dove evolution video was shocking. At the end, it didn't really even look like the model from the beginning. It makes me wonder why they use models (who are already beautiful in the first place), and then change the way they look. While it is nice to see perfect, flawless pictures of people or setting, sometimes it is better to see what people or places look like naturally. After seeing these videos, I now understand to what extent photographers and advertisers will go to sell their products.

The other video talked about how we are surrounded by visual literacy everyday. Some visual literacy is country- specific, such as brand names, but others are universal like Coke and Starbucks. You can go almost anywhere in the world and be able to find a MacDonalds even if you don't speak the language of the country, because of the symbol of the golden arches which is universal. Without visual literacy, we would be lost. For one thing, driving would be harder because though we don't always realize it, we rely a lot on symbols and road signs to warn us about sudden stops, yielding and merging.

As a teacher, I will need to be able to inform my students about visual literacy. It is important to let them know that pictures are manipulated to portray a certain idea in your mind about where something took place. In the article, it said that students like to see visuals of things that happened in history becuase it gives them more meaning. I will try to provide them with as many pictures and visual examples as possible, but it is important for them to remember that what they see may not always be true.

This is a video that I thought was interesting because it showed how images change over time and through cultures. It talked about how we are bombarded with images every day and sometimes we don;t understand them. Another good point it showed was that 2 different images can be portraying the same thing, but depending on the materials used to create the images, the meanings may be interpreted differently.

Visual Literacy across the Curriculum