Springing in to DI: Images

It’s all about first impressions of images this morning as I race to catch up with the day after springing into spring and chasing a lost hour.  The images that curators select in DI often make the first impression while I am navigating the site and cause me to pause, dip, and dig in to various collections and resources.

Some resources are simply provocative, like the one that Nicole DeVoss uses for her collection “When Images ‘Lie’: Critical Visual Literacy.”  President Obama and Sarah Palin are dancing away in sequined glory on the state of “Dancing with the Stars.”  I pause, do a double take, and then want to read more when I look at the questions that Nicole uses to invite us in to the resource:

“What does it mean to be ‘visually’ literate?  How can we encourage students to be more deliberate and careful in how they look at the images that circulate in today’s digital culture?”

A simple Wordle, which many of us have learned is a powerful teaching and learning tool, stands out among the other images surrounding it due to its simplicity.  “Criteria” and “expectations” catch my eye as I scan the list and pause on Anne Herrington’s and Charlie Moran’s “Assessing Multimedia Compositions.”  The points of emphasis in the Wordle make sense as I read Anne’s and Charlie’s abstract:

“Assessment of multimedia composing is a very young discipline.  Will our learning expectations and criteria for composing and evaluating paper essays suffice?”

And then there are images that are not clear to me, even when I click on the resource, enlarge them, and begin to read through the abstract like the one used for Stephanie Vanderslice’s collection “A Whole New Mind: Education for the 21st Century.”  I can guess at what might be presented in this resource as I look at the treasure box that includes a chalk/slate writing tablet, marbles, a key, and other “treasures.”  The images used for the resources emphasize the nostalgia associated with the treasure box and ground our thinking in the 21st century:

“…at the dawn of the 21st century we are witnessing the start of the Conceptual Age, an age that will favor the right brain and requires us to use both our left and right brains in concert.”

These images all grab my attention and invite me in to collections and resources I might have missed and remind me of the ways that many of my students read.  It inspires an awareness that I will carry with me as I plan a new week of lessons.


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