Things I learned this week that were completely new to me started with the importance of emphasize visual literacy in schools today. This started with viewing Martin Scorsese's video on edutopia.org, on the importance of visual literacy. He describes the challenges that he face growing up in an environment that did not provide a lot of access to visual media. Being a highly advanced visual learner and interpreter (I base this on his obvious success in his film career), he had to compensate himself by finding his own outlets for his skills. It wasn't until later in his development, when he gained more access to films and finally the camera, that he was able to fully produce his best work. He also points out all of the ways which film, in particular, can be used to show human behavior, psychology, stories, scenes, settings, history and so much more. He also notes that even camera techniques - zooming, angle, panning, booming, etc. - can convey meaning in film. Thus, our interpretation of 'what visual literacy means,' is broadened.

    I also learned the difference between synchronous and asynchronous tools. Synchronous tools are more live-based tools for visual literacy such as white-boarding and video/web-conferencing. Asynchronous tools are more previously-stored tools that are readily accessible. I think educators rely heavily on asynchronous methods, which encourages me to try to use more synchronous methods in the future. I think video-conferencing with a class in France, for example may do a lot to improve global citizenship: a lot more than an average foreign language class may provide.

     I'm also excited about using edmodo.com which is a safe social media reminiscent program that allows teachers to set up accounts for their classroom, and create integrative presentations activities and much more that can allow both teachers and students to contribute to the use of visual literacy in the classroom. I also focused a lot on how this could be used for collaboration. Thanks to the www.jakesonline.org blog I learned about a lot of tools that are great for 21st century collaborators to increase visual literacy. I also thought about how this tied into the NETS standards for teachers, in particular, #5. Engage in professional growth and leadership. We can grow ourselves by constantly researching new ways to incorporate visual literacy into our lessons. Also, we can demonstrate leadership by encourage collaboration in visual literacy with other teachers. Finally, we can demonstrate how important it is for our students global digital citizenship to be able to easily navigate visual media technology in the 21st century, because of it's increased emphasis particularly in the workplace.

   You may like to visit loonapix.com, I plan on using this website in my class to help edit images in order to make them more effective learning tools. I also enjoy looking through the PBS pdf on visual literacy where it gives specific lesson plans for subjects like, "Global Connections: The Middle East - Stereotypes: More Than Meets the Eye," one of particular interest to me personally. It provides a PBS website link of visual images and then provides a corresponding lesson plan. This are great useful tools for increasing the use of appropriate visual literacy in the classroom.

Thanks for reading :)