Visual Literacy: Textbook Analysis

Over the past few decades, enhancements in the visual fields have greatly improved, giving weight on the importance of visual material in text. Something that is more visually stimulating can usually make a text more convincing or credible. The term “seeing is believing” proves this fact. As humans, we tend to believe something if we can actually see it, which is why Jay David Bolter has referred to this phenomenon of the changed role of text and graphics as the “visual culture” in his book Writing Space. “Mere words no longer seemed adequate; they had to share their space with images.” (Bolter, 69).

Teachers teach based on what resources are provided or what they can purchase or locate to assist in learning. Some contents have textbooks or consumables that are aligned with the state standards. This is not always the case. Some school have no textbook due to funding or students have to share the limited resources. With the continued changed in education, additional resources are sometimes needed to supplement instruction.

I have learnt that as adults, we already have the skills for reading but using illustrations, sounds and words is a multimodality tool. I tend not to use these different strategies and I think at first, this made my writing in Storybird difficult. I had plenty of ideas but had trouble finding images. I learnt children have far more of a free flowing attitude than adults do, and it took me a while to focus on writing around the images rather than finding an image to match my writing. Children already know much about multimodal texts from their home experiences. As teaching assistant’s it is our responsibility to build on these experiences and the children’s knowledge, recognising the relationships between different modes and use this in our teaching. The future of reading and writing is interwoven with the future of digital technology (UKLA 2005).

“People only see what they are prepared to see” is a famous quote by Ralph Waldo. This quote emphasises the fact that the purpose of a text can often be unnoticed and misinterpreted by the viewer. Many people only have a limited world experience, and it’s the Distinctly Visual feature of a text which allows the viewer to gain a better understanding. Distinctly Visual texts use a combination of techniques to create and shape an audience’s point of view or interpretation, and visualising a text requires the responder to interpret all of the images presented.

I also believed the teacher’s manual for this textbook was helping for not only the teacher, but also the student in being able to get the information across to the student that might have difficulty understanding the reading material. The teacher’s manual provided activities and experiments for each chapter in the book to help both teacher and student.

Ryan, W. (2012). Visual literacy: Learning to see. San Diego, CA: Bridgepoint Education, Inc. [Electronic version]. Retrieved from https://content.ashford.edu/

To begin with, before studying this English module, my skills in presenting information in chart format was insufficient. In this visual literacy assignment, students were evaluated on their ability to interpret illustrations as well as various kinds of data and the presentation thereof in a meaning full way. Compared with the first assignment, I scored the highest mark for this one. However, the course material gave me the much-needed background information on creating a meaningful analysis of vast sets of data. For example, the type of data presented in a pie chart will be different from the data presented in a bar or line chart. This was incredibly beneficial information and provided me a new perspective on the creating of charts. Consequently,

Thank you for sharing some great resources. The first two articles you chose I felt were outstanding to begin understanding visual literacy. I loved the information contained in within them as they presented us an overview of what visual literacy is and its importance. It appeared that "the need for visual literacy instruction in the K-12 education" was a very popular resource for the three of us. Did you find elements of it useful that you intend to incorporate into your learning or use with students? I believe Topiel did an excellent job giving readers general information and application for visual literacy, which I found very helpful.

The author argues that, “ Why history textbook is considered boring by the high school students, and are not interested to learn about their own history.”

Literacy art, visual arts, and music are all very different ways of expressing oneself. Literacy art is way to express yourself through words and put in the emotion that one is feeling when writing literature. When one is writing literature you are able to express not only your emotion, but also the emotions that the other characters are feeling in the story. When you are able to read about every characters emotion, you are able to understand the situation from another person's point of view and how they reacted.

Graphic novels are a mixture of words and pictures. This allows for students to connect what they are reading with actual visuals. The visuals help supplement what they read and allow the reader’s comprehension of the material to be reinforced. Also, unlike traditional textbooks, graphic novels encourage the reader to look at the visuals instead of skipping over them. They encourage this behavior by incorporating the visuals into the text material (Boennan-Cornell, 2015). This is important because the

There is great importance in children having access to thoughtful and purposefully selected texts. Children's knowledge and growth stems from curiosity and desire to learn. Through reading children become learners and investigators by connecting their thoughts with texts. I believe in every classroom should be multiple genre of books. There should be song books, chapter books, picture books, wordless books, and multiple informational books over single subjects. When

We appreciate simplicity and efficiency. We can no longer bear trying to read those wordy textbooks within short time. Using a tiny sword, you would not be able to beat the notorious monster. It is the time for you to develop a more sophisticated weapon. Students usually create their own summary or cheat sheets. These student-made works are actually written in the way in which textbooks should be; the content is shortened while the quality is still maintained. These new representations of information are going to wipe the obsolete ones out. The unwelcoming textbooks are not needed any more as the new forms of knowledge are more concise and more effective – which are the qualities that most textbooks do not have. We believe in everyone’s potential and their perpetual effect on this world. It is the time to use your own ability to create better textbooks for yourself and the community.

The content lesson plan was done for Languages, Mathematics and Social Studies whereby meaningful and appealing opportunities for the students to practice, master and learn were arrived at through competent teaching strategies which enabled the students to develop and learn within their academic, linguistic and social contexts to build instructional opportunities that optimized their learning. Further, performance indicators were used to inspire prior knowledge as well as link fresh ideas to the students’ familiar experiences and ideas.

In the field of language learning, course books and materials play a crucial role in order to teach effectively. We as teachers need course books or any kind of materials in order to teach the components of the language to the students. It is quite impossible to teach without any materials because there should be something for students to read or to see in order to understand something. Therefore, teaching materials are really significant in language learning. Teachers sometimes purchase their own course book or the government gives to them. Teachers can find whatever they need to teach in these course books however sometimes they can look for additional materials to support the learning. Before choosing the materials, teachers need to evaluate them in order to get an effective material. There is no best course book which can suit to the all contexts because the needs of the students and teachers might differ. So, teachers need to evaluate their own course book according to their context. There might be many contexts such as; teaching English to adults in order to develop their speaking skills or teaching English to young learners. Because of that, evaluators must be aware of different contexts and evaluate according to them. Cunningsworth (1979:31) agrees: “Course materials are not intrinsically good or bad – rather