The Unexplored Promise of Visual Literacy in American Classrooms
2008; SAGE Publishing; Volume: 90; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1177/003172170809000306
ISSN1940-6487
Autores Tópico(s)Augmented Reality Applications
ResumoNot too long ago, my wife decided to try one of those online-groceries-delivered-to-your-home deals from our neighborhood chain. She knew that setting up template for initial order would take time, but she expected that she could just point and click and save us 90 minutes every weekend once that process was over. What surprised her and me (enlisted to help) was that we saw only a brand name in script, a size selection, and a price. There was no click down for an image, packaging color scheme, company logo, dairy maid, ear of corn, giant with an earring, etc. Just a three-word description of item--Tom's Toothpaste-w/whitener--size, and price. Suddenly, we were both challenged to try to visualize and choose precise products that we had routinely been selecting off shelf, sometimes for 20 years, as we whisked down aisles on automatic pilot. What has this got to do with education? Let me connect some dots, so to speak. The composition of students in our urban classrooms has changed dramatically. Long gone are mythical days of general ed with a large core of on- or near-grade-level students, a few outliers slower in their reading, one or two with mild learning disabilities, and occasional second-language learner. The inner-city classrooms I see these days may not have a single student who is reading at grade level among their 30 or so students. The classrooms are likely to have anywhere from four to 10 students with special needs, ranging from those who require minor accommodations to others who need teachers to make substantial adjustments to their planning, instructional materials, and assessments. The mix is also likely to include a number of students with behavioral challenges and, of course, six to eight whose home language is not English and who may have come from countries where their education was interrupted or minimal to begin with. Our shorthand in Boston for this challenging array of learners is the new classroom, and implications for instruction, teacher training and development, technology needs, and additional human resources are overwhelming. Next dot? The dropout crisis. The scale of problem is frightening. Boston is losing than 1,500 high school age students a year to streets. In 2007, USA Today reported that among nation's 50 largest districts, three are graduating fewer than 40% of their students: Detroit, 21.7%; Baltimore, 38.5%; and New York City, 38.9%. Public school systems are hard pressed to address how they will stem tide of disengaged youth. Add one final complicating dot to this picture. The old wisdom goes, if you spend much time in high schools, you realize that in every hour, best five minutes for most students occur during passing time. The hallways are where real action is--home to lively talk, curiosity, engagement, relationships, and passionate pursuit of what's happening. Those frenetic moments between classes are increasingly characterized by proliferation of personal electronics that connect, display, gratify, and inform--cell phones that transmit flashing images and texts, iPods, uploads, downloads, students racing to find available computers to search Internet, e-mail, or instant message. While images and visual literacy are prevalent for our kids, our instruction is becoming text-driven, a function of press to prepare students for all-important testing formats, starting in early grades and including dozens of state tests, SATs, APs, etc. As Thomas West asserts, more and we insist on having our schools teaching skills of medieval clerk--reading, writing, counting, and memorizing texts. (1) As a frequent observer of schools and classrooms, I have to agree with West that clerk-dom has become daily lot for too many young people struggling to find a hint of meaning or access into work and swimming in text. …
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