What is Visual Literacy?

Creating with Visual Media is about using design techniques and tools for visual communication, including  

Awareness of the logic, emotions, and attitudes suggested in visual messages

What is Visual Literacy?

"although these students were indeed visual learners and traveled seamlessly in a world rich with sight (and sound), they lacked the ability to express themselves visually."

digital technologies have broken down the barriers between words and pictures, and many of these same academics are now willing to acknowledge that melding text with image constructs new meaning."

Writing studies researcher Chris-tian Weisser advocates for students to “locate strong publics where their voices can lead to action,” so that public writing has a greater chance of leading to “significant, tangible, immediate results”

The takeaway here is that to conceive of a singular public sphere—or the general public—is inaccurate;

While Habermas’s concep-tion of the public sphere was foundational, his work has been criticized for being overly idealized. If you were not a White male with property, you were not able to participate in civic debates in the public spher

Everything else tends to be lumped in with “the general public”—like the people out there who read newspapers or your Instagram followers. Here’s the problem. There’s really no such thing as the general public. In fact, my quick list of audiences above should already suggest to you that each of those groups has a set of distinct characteristics

like discovering your issue and defin-ing the exigence—without also considering other components—like the audience or genre for your writing.

why this issue? And, why now? For example, a student in one of the civic writing courses I taught selected to research and write about a bill that would allow local governments to relocate monuments.

This is evident when you switch on a ]V show such as ER.

(an ethnic neighborhood in which mem-bers share a histoty, language, public space, local institutions such as schools, and a local newspaper),

But most of us-unless trained and mentored for yeats--cannot participate fully in

But dont nobody’s language, dialect, or style make them

ultural critic Stanley Fish come talkin bout—in his three-piece New York Times “What Should Colleges Teach?” suit—there only one way to speak and write to get ahead in the world, that wri

110 IJCS <http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/31/what-should-colleges-teach>. ---.“What Should Colleges Teach? Part 3.” Opinionator: Exclusive Online Com-mentary From The Times. The New York Times, 7 Sept. 2009. 30 April 2010 <http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/07/what-should-colleges-teach>. Rée, Jonathan. “The Translation of Philosophy.” New Literary History 32.2 (2001). 223-57. Venuti, Lawrence. The Translator’s Invisibility: a History of Translation. Lon-don, New York: Routledge, 1995. Vershawn Ashanti Young: Should Writer’s Use They Own English? What would a composition course based on the method I urge look like? [...] First, you must clear your mind of [the following...]: “We affirm the students’ right to their own patterns and varieties of language—the dialects of their nurture or whatever dialects in which they find their own identity and style.” --Stanley Fish, “What Should Colleges Teach? Part 3.” Cultural critic Stanley Fish come talkin bout—in his three-piece New York Times “What Should Colleges Teach?” suit—there only one way to speak and write to get ahead in the world, that writin teachers should “clear [they] mind of the ortho-doxies that have taken hold in the composition world” (“Part 3”). He say dont no student have a rite to they own language if that language make them “vulnerable to prejudice”; that “it may be true that the standard language is [...] a device for protecting the status quo, but that very truth is a reason for teaching it to students” (Fish “Part 3”). Lord, lord, lord! Where do I begin, cuz this man sho tryin to take the nation back to a time when we were less tolerant of linguistic and racial differences. Yeah, I said racial difference, tho my man Stan be talkin explicitly bout language differences. The two be intertwined.

You should know that my mother'sexpressive command of English belieshow much she actually understands.She reads the Forbes report, listens toWall Street Week, converses daily withher stockbroker, reads ShirleyMacLaine's books with ease—allkinds of things I can't begin to under-stand.

Tan's first novel. The Joy Luck Club, exploresrelationships between Chinese mothers and theirAmerican daughters.

Corridos first became widely used along the South Texas/ Mexican border during the early conflict between Chicanos and Anglos. The corridos are usually about Mexican heroes who do valiant deeds against the Anglo oppressors.

Wild tongues can't be tamed, they can only be cut out.

By developing a growth mindset and being flexible and open-minded as a learner, becoming an active reader is about using strategies to get through difficult texts.

I have always used personalized symbols in the margins of texts, like a star for ideas I like, a “Q” for Quotes I may use in my essays or papers, a “!” for an alarming or surprising idea. I often use ? for difficult or confusing concepts that I want to return to later, if I still don’t understand it by the time I’m finished reading the article or chapter. Or I’ll use that annotated question as a chance to engage in discussion with others and better understand the text later in class, with the help of my colleagues

Readers can create meaning in any number of ways as they read actively, from asking questions in the margins, to making connections with other texts and other authors.

An important part of growing as a reader and writer is understanding who you are as a learner, but also learning from the models provided to you by readers and writers who came before you.

advanced writers make choices and moves within the expectations of the genre, that genres are also continually changing.

Skimming is an important pre-reading step because it gives you a sense of the text before you start going in-depth, where you practice various ways of annotating, reading like a writer, mind mapping, and close reading (all described in detail below).

The reason is simple: because a single test cannot test everybody’s abilities

we take constructivist teaching and learning further, where we borrow from Alfie Kohn who frames learning around “deep questions” generated by students.

questioning is how students learn best

open spaces for collaboration of ideas

motivated by your connections,

Like all trips, this book will have a beginning and an end, with a middle that will provide many insights and stories from our teaching that are hopefully memorable because they relate to your own experience.

white people spend energy defending against charges of racism instead of