Visual Literacy

My last post dealt with infographics. That is one type of image that students will come across as they navigate on the web. What else is out there that we should be preparing our students to recognize? Here are 10 sites (articles, lists of resources, tools) to help you teach visual literacy:

• A Periodic Table of Visualization Methods – I’ve shared this with you before, but I continue to be amazed by the amount of information in this graphic.

• The Visual Literacy Toolbox from the University of Maryland has some interesting online activities – From reading political cartoons to creating a map of a Utopian Society by clicking and dragging certain elements in the SimUtopia app.

• Demographics and Deception  Learn how maps and statistics can be used to persuade you. Many articles like this can be found at the Learn NC site by searching for visual literacy.

• Martin Scorese: Teaching Visual Literacy – This is a video (11 mins.) and an article.

• Concept Mapping/Mind Mapping is an important skill for our students, and so is collaboration. Mind Meister and Mindomo allow for collaborative mind mapping. (Here’s an example of a Mindomo on Information Literacy.)

• Science Literacy Maps – Shows the flow of an idea from K-12.

• Stairs to visual excellence

• Imagine a Pie Chart Stomping on an Infographic Forever – Blog Post with many infographics to demonstrate technique blunders.

• Do you like Wordle? Check out this blog post with some tips, tools, and alternatives for word clouds.

• A Picture is worth a thousand thoughts – Image with examples of Bloom’s Taxonomy questions at each level.

• Yes, I know this is the 11th bullet, but have you seen the educator resources for the Visual Thesaurus?

Have fun exploring!