Essentials of Teaching and Integrating Visual and Media Literacy Danilo M. Baylen • Adriana D’Alba Editors Essentials of Teaching and Integrating Visual and Media Literacy Visualizing Learning 1 3 Editors Danilo M. Baylen Adriana D’Alba Educational Technology and Foundations Educational Technology and Foundations University of West Georgia University of West Georgia Carrollton, Georgia Carrollton, Georgia USA USA ISBN 978-3-319-05836-8 ISBN 978-3-319-05837-5 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-05837-5 Library of Congress Control Number: 2015930552 Springer Cham Heidelberg New York Dordrecht London © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. Printed on acid-free paper Springer is a brand of Springer International Publishing Springer International Publishing is part of Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com) Foreword “The question is not what you look at, but what you see.” —Henry David Thoreau, Journals, Vol. 1, November 16, 1830 Visual and media literacy have been a part of my life and my educational interests for, well, forever it seems. I am honored to have been asked to introduce this book, and am hopeful that the many interesting chapters shared here will make a differ- ence to educators at all levels of teaching, administration, and design of curricula or professional development. The topics are multidisciplinary and involve multiple aspects of media and visual literacy. One of the editors, Danilo M. Baylen, has grown from a young doctoral student at Northern Illinois University, sharing his home country culture through a display of native textiles in my visual literacy course years ago, to an experienced, respect- ed member of academia with a strong interest in visual and media literacy as part of his work in literacy and technology, as well as having an enviable career in higher education both as a professor and an administrator. As his former professor, I am proud of his having co-proposed and completed the editing of this text. Becoming an Advocate for Media and Visual Literacy With all the attention focused on media and visual literacy in the twenty-first cen- tury, it might be helpful to look at the interest as it developed over time. My own history mirrors the growth of visual and media literacy in education, and the experi- ences of many of the experts in these areas who have been active in promoting and researching these topics over the past 40 or more years. How do educators become advocates for visual and media literacy? As a baby boomer, I grew up loving the movies. Early TV was nothing like it is today, but it was still a cultural influence not to be ignored. After all, the Beatles first appeared on TV when we boomers were in high school! And since my father was a photographer, I spent hours in our home darkroom learning from those emerging images, like many others did in the “Kodak” era of the 1950s. v vi Foreword In the 1970s, with media and visual literacy concepts emerging from commu- nication scholars like McLuhan and visual communications experts such as Donis Dondis, Jack Debes, and others, we had a great deal of freedom to explore cur- rent events and media as part of our language arts curriculum. In 1972, along with many of those still working to promote and improve these literacies, I was teaching language arts to middle school students (in Illinois, USA). We showed educational films as part of our instruction, and used literature to film translations such as The Diary of Anne Frank to help motivate students. We taught media literacy, using public media such as billboards, newspapers and magazines, and television news, and had students create their own publications. We developed a unit on television and studied narrative structures, character development, genre, stereotyping, adver- tising, humor, and suspense. Students wrote, recorded, and edited news and comedy programs with original commercials as a culminating activity. After school hours, I started a film club to both study and create movies with students, and sponsored the school newspaper. We knew that our activities were motivating and that they helped develop litera- cy and language skills and critical thinking abilities. But I do not recall ever having heard the terms visual literacy or media literacy until, after 5 years of teaching, I started to study educational technology and communications in graduate school. At the University of Wisconsin–Madison, I focused my attention on visual communi- cations media and critical analysis skills for students of all ages. Many of us in our doctoral studies were interested in critical analysis and images. Our student cohort included David Considine, now considered one of the pioneers in media literacy, and his colleague Robert Muffoletto, and so discussions about film, photography, affective learning, and the impact of images were a regular part of my education. My first published article presented ideas for teachers wanting to add critical viewing of video to their curriculum activities, based upon my earlier experiences. And my doctoral dissertation investigated 8th graders’ understanding of narrative elements of short fiction from film and video. This represented a change in education, since previous research in technology-related topics was quasi-exper- imental and rarely involved real classrooms of students. During and after graduate school, my early articles included “You’ve Ruined TV for Me,” an article titled after a comment from an 8th grader after our long televi- sion unit was over. He was complaining that he now saw all the misplaced micro- phones and bad shadows in TV programs; he had developed critical viewing skills along with our language arts activities. It was through other members of that Madi- son cohort that I learned of the International Visual Literacy Association (IVLA), in which I have been very active since 1982. This organization was one of the first to offer a definition of visual literacy and a place for scholars, educators, artists, videographers, and so on to debate ideas and share strategies, projects, educational research, and materials. IVLA has annual conferences where research and projects from around the world in multiple disciplines have been presented and shared since 1969, with published Selected Readings from the conferences each year. It is one of the groups helping to promote the importance of media and visual literacy today. Foreword vii Through IVLA, I met the international scholar Rune Pettersson, who has con- tinually added to the scholarship in information design and message design along with other aspects of visual literacy. Recently, he wrote about early visual literacy (Pettersson 2013): A historical view shows that discussions about the use of images have a long history. Sev- eral definitions reveal that visual literacy is an ability, a competency, or a skill. Visual literacy is an interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary, and multidimensional area of knowledge. Different kinds of visuals may be applied in almost all subject matter areas and in different media. From a theoretical view, visual literacy includes visual language, visual thinking, visual perception, visual communication, and visual learning. Seen from a communications view, presentation of an intended message involves a wide range of professional interest groups concerned with its design, production, distribution, and use. (n.p.) To me, this brief discussion captures the essence of both visual and media literacy. The many foundational theory areas, the multidisciplinary nature of the issues, and the importance of helping to develop the skills for improved communication have always been the foundation of these literacies in my opinion. The two terms have often seemed competitive, overlapping, and not necessarily disparate in their mean- ing and approach. One difference often noted has been that visual literacy is less connected to any particular medium, and therefore, more universal. I often told students in my visual literacy graduate class that visual literacy was the overarching term, and media literacy fit within it. Media literacy may seem more fluid because it must respond to and change with the media and technology available, such as newer digital tools and global access to Web-based social media imagery. But that could make visual literacy the more static term. So with this shared background, it should not be surprising that visual and media literacies have been woven into my teaching and scholarship throughout my career at Northern Illinois University. I have been active in promoting these literacies to teachers, administrators, library media specialists, and researchers for over 30 years. Like many other academic programs around the country and the globe, we routinely have offered our graduate level visual literacy course for education and museum studies students, and I have been very pleased to see the increased attention to these concepts in the standards and professional expectations of K-20 educators.