Digital Images in the Classroom

I really enjoyed this week's readings about images in multimodal texts (Serafini, 2011), as well as the chapter four in the textbook on using digital images in the classroom (Hutchison & Colwell, 2015).  Both of these texts go hand in hand for creating lessons around teaching our students how to read and interpret digital images.  As the book mentions, it is important that we explicitly teach our students about digital images so that students build their comprehension skills of digital images and can better understand digital images, such as advertisements, in the real world.  The book and the article mention several different ways to engage students in digital images and teach them, through hands-on experiences with technology, how to interpret, understanding, and visualize digital images. I would like to mention a couple of my favorite points from the article and book, as well as how I would combine the two texts to create questions and ideas for students in my classroom.

One of the perspectives for comprehending multimodal texts that I connected with the most from the reading was about the "grammar of visual design" (Serafini, 2011). One of the structures of the grammar of visual design is composition, "How objects are organized and positioned in a visual image," (Serafini, 2011, p. 346).  One way I would use this structure of visual design in the classroom would be to ask students to annotate a web page to determine the central idea and information of that web page.  By annotating a web page, students can show that they understand the meaning of the web page and draw attention to important aspects.  Some questions I would use to guide students would be, "What catches your eye first?" "What are the dominant colors? What effects do they have on you as a reader?" (Serafini, 2011, p. 346).  I would also ask students, "How did you determine which parts of the web page are important to annotate and which parts are not?"  

T. (n.d.). TOMS® Official Site

Sample website students could annotate, http://www.toms.com/ 

The second structure of the grammar of visual design is perspective, "How close or far away the viewer is positioned relative to the objects," (Serafini, 2011, p. 346).  It is important for students to notice the perspective of the characters in relation to themselves.  Which characters or objects are close to you?  Which are farther away?  Are you looking up or down at the character or object?  What does the positioning of the character or object tell you about it?  These are some of the questions I would ask students to guide them in learning about the positioning of the character or object in the digital image.  A great way to teach students about perspective would be through the use of advertisements.  I think I would have students examine both digital advertisements and non-digital advertisements.  We would discuss the character or objects' positioning in the advertisements, as well as examine the similarities and differences between the digital and non-digital images. This would provide students with an authentic experience in the perspective of digital images. 

(Sagin, 2016)

The third structure of the grammar of visual design is visual symbols, "Ideas that are conventionalized through their use in sociocultural contexts," (Serafini, 2011, p. 346).  Visual symbols can be quite difficult for students to grasp, as the symbols constructed are often used to convey meaning beyond the literal level of the image.  Thus, discussing these meanings and getting students to think about the image beyond the literal sense, can help students learn about connotative elements. 

(Visual Argument Analysis. 2013)

References:

Hutchison, A. & Colwell, J. (2015). Bridging technology and literacy. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield

Sagin, E. (2016, December 20). WordStream. Retrieved February 11, 2017, from http://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2015/12/02/creative-display-ad-ideas

Serafini, F. (2011). Expanding perspectives for comprehending visual images in multimodal texts. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 54(5), 342-350. doi:10.1598/jaal.54.5.4

T. (n.d.). TOMS® Official Site | The One for One® Company. Retrieved February 11, 2017, from http://www.toms.com/

Visual Argument Analysis. (2013, February 07). Retrieved February 11, 2017, from https://crispyconclusions.wordpress.com/2013/02/07/visual-argument-analysis/