The Ditigal Narrative has heaps of resources and links to other websites that explore digital storytelling and new media.

Glass’ advice is that it takes years before you can produce work that is where you want it to be in terms of quality. One of the big issues with the whole “digital native” idea is the associated misconception that if we give students a computer, camera and an editing suite and they will intuitively be able to produce sophisticated videos, podcasts, article, websites etc. Experience tells me that students do not intuitively know this stuff. The danger is that when students’ work is, in Glass’ words “kinda crappy”, it all seems too hard and we subsequently avoid including media production in our classrooms. We revert to analysing other people’s work rather than providing students with opportunities to create their own.

Glass says that it is “totally normal” for people to become disheartened by the lack of quality in their work and that “a lot of people never get past that phase – a lot of people at that point quit and the thing that I would like to say to you with all my heart is that most everybody I know who does interesting, creative work they went through a phrase of years that it didn’t have that special thing we wanted it to have.”

His advice is that “the most important thing is to produce a lot of work”, to “put yourself on a deadline so that every week, every month you create one story… It’s only by going through a volume of work that you catch up and close that gap and the work you’re making will be as good as your ambitions.”

As Clay Burrell writes, the message for teachers from this video is that we shouldn’t “grade blogging, podcasting, and other things too harshly.” For students, the message is that being creative is hard work and that it takes time and practice to produce quality material. The message for me is that students can only get better if I provide them with the opportunity and time to do so.

Dean Shareski has created a Design Matters Keynote for the 2007 Flat Classroom Project.
This is a remix of his presentation for the K-12 Online Conference in which Shareski challenges the fact that “creativity and design are often seen as frivolous or at best icing on the cake of learning” and presents reasons why design is an integral part of effective communication. He gives specific techniques on how to improve design when it comes to using multimedia and technology so that projects are of excellent quality.

Having worked as a newspaper sub editor before becoming a teacher, the importance of design is something that I feel passionate about. One of the big ideas we discuss as part of the senior English curriculum is how “meaning is shaped” in different texts, whether they are visual, written or multimedia. Design plays a key role in this shaping of meaning and I’ve written about the importance of visual literacy here and here.

In newspapers, a favourite maxim is that “white space is your friend” and sums up how design should be based on the principles of simplicity in order to make the information you are presenting accessible and engaging to the chosen audience.

Some of the main ideas in the presentation are:
Planning: As Eisenhower said, “plans are nothing, but planning is everything.” Storyboarding and having a clear concept before you begin are important aspects of making an engaging video with a clear message.

Imagery: Dean advises that students should avoid using Google to find images and instead find images on dedicated sites such as flickr.
“When you are publishing to an public audience, simplicity is so important.”

Have a clear, concise message that you are wanting to convey.

Having white space, or negative space enables you to focus on the things that are really important.

Simplicity in communication. If they aren’t adding to your message it’s likely they are taking away from your message. Think about how you are transitioning from big ideas.”

Constraints: Whatever we do we need to ask ourselves “can we make it shorter?”

Originality: “Being original doesn’t mean you can’t borrow ideas as we all do that. Consider one or two features that might make your movie different, not just to stand out but to add to the message. Third, how do you elicit emotions from people, even if you want to inform you want people to feel something about your message. The images, font, audio can all contribute to this. Look at movies and advertisements and ask what do they want me to feel.

Inspired by Dean Shareski’s K-12 presentation, Clay Burrell has also explored the significance of design, in Cutting the Crap (from student iMovies). In this eight-minute video Clay shows how to 1) find content on Creative Commons, 2) use Zamzar to download YouTube and other videos for mashups, and 3) do advanced Ken Burns Effects.

The section on finding images using a Creative Commons search is especially useful as it is important that we reinforce to students that content on the internet is copyrighted and that there are rules that govern how we legally (and ethically) use other people’s content.

For these reasons, I like the term “information literacy”, which seems to be have particular currency amongst library specialists. Information literacy is not as narrow as “digital literacy” and also helps overcome the “if it’s not on the web it doesn’t exist” idea that many of my students subscribe to. The best metaphors for information overload in our culture are, in my opinion, being lost in a data smog or trying to drink from a fire hydrant – the vastness of information that surrounds us can be overwhelming.

Via Hey Jude:

Information literacy defined can as “the set of skills needed to find, retrieve, analyze, and use information.”

Information Literacy includes:

Media Literacy

Visual Literacy

Cultural Literacy

Digital Literacy

Alphabetic Literacy

Image: http://chs.smuhsd.org/community/information_literacy.htm

Another open source timeline application is available as part of the MIT SIMILE project, but it looks much, much harder; in fact, it looks too hard.

An understanding of symbolism is at the heart of effective visual representation and I’m going to focus on exploring this in more depth with my senior classes to better prepare them for visual representation assessment.

To quote Steve Jobs: “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”

Colour is a key element and the Colour in Motion interactive site is a fantastic intro to how colour is used to convey meaning. The “meaning” of colour can also be culturally-specific and this site explains the different associations of colours in various societies. The Paint Cafe has a section of the symbolism of different colours and explains how “every colour carries images and symbols that are influenced by culture, history and circumstances”.

Take the colours red and yellow, for example:

Red

• China: Good luck, celebration, summoning
• Cherokees: Success, triumph
• India: Purity
• South Africa: Colour of mourning
• Russia: Bolsheviks and Communism
• Eastern: Worn by brides
• Western: Excitement, danger, love, passion, stop, Christmas (with green)

Yellow

• China: Nourishing
• Egypt: Colour of mourning
• Japan: Courage
• India: Merchants
• Western: Hope, hazards, coward

According to Colour Logic for Powerpoint (2003), the sources for complex and often contradictory meanings of colors can be attributed to:

1. Cultural associations: the colour of currency, traditions, celebrations, geography, etc. (For example, green is associated with heaven (Muslims) and luck (Ireland)

2. Political and historical associations: the colour of flags, political parties, royalty, etc. (For example, after the Bolshevik Revolution red became the colour of communism.)

3. Religious and mythical associations: the colours associated with spiritual or magical beliefs (For example, the green man was the God of fertility in Celtic myths)

4. Linguistic associations: colour terminology within individual languages (For example, South Pacific languages refer to shades of green by comparison to plants in various stages of growth. In Scottish Gaelic the word for blue (’gorm’) is also the word used for the color of grass.)

5. Contemporary usage and fads: current color applications to objects, sports, and associations generated by modern conventions and trends. (For example, green is used world wide for traffic lights signifying “go.”

One of the best resources is Colour, contrast and news design, by the Poynter Institute.

An example from the site:

Learning from the artist: Artists have known for centuries that colour evokes emotions and creates powerful moods. Vincent van Gogh used yellow in an intense way to make a scene literally glow in The Night Cafe. About this painting, he said: “I tried to express an idea that the cafe is a place where one can ruin oneself, go mad or commit a crime.”

Images: http://www.vggallery.com/painting/p_0463.htm

http://www.paintcafe.com/en/couleur/langage/symbolique/bleu.asp

“We must prepare young people for living in a world of powerful images, words and sounds.”

UNESCO, 1982

I have been thinking about the concept of visual literacy a lot lately and its significance to students I work with. My previous job as a journalist and newspaper designer meant I developed a keen interest in the relationship between design and meaning and how imagery, fonts, composition etc. all contribute to how meaning is constructed, especially in multimedia texts. I don’t think that presentation is important because texts (and I mean texts in a generic way) have to be “pretty” or serve as “eye candy” but because the predominant way we access and disseminate information today is through visual media. Visual media is “the” language we communicate in every day and students need to develop a sophisticated understanding of these complex techniques in order to communicate effectively themselves. One of my classes recently completed a visual representation of values in Othello and it is clear that few of them are able to effectively communicate their ideas or understanding visually. It is interesting that, as 16 year olds, they demonstrate few of the skills associated with “digitial natives” and while they (mostly passively) consume vast amounts of visual information they have little understanding of how to create visual media themselves.

So I thought I’d spend some time while I’m on holidays thinking through how I can teach the concepts and skills of visual literary more effectively and consolidate all the resources I’ve been looking at here.

Starting with a definition: visual literacy is the ability to understand, analyse, evaluate and create texts that use still and moving images and audio to communicate in imaginative and informative ways.

I also like this definition from the Online Visual Literacy Project.: visual literacy is the ability, through knowledge of the basic visual elements, to understand the meaning and components of the image.

The NSW English Syllabus defines visual literacy as: “ The ability to decode, interpret, create, question, challenge and evaluate texts that communicate with visual images as well as, or rather than words. Visually literate people can read the intended meaning in a visual text such as an advertisement or a film shot, interpret the purpose and intended meaning, and evaluate the form, structure and features of the text. They can also use images in a creative and appropriate way to express meaning.”

David Jakes has fantastic resources assembled on his visual literary wiki. He defines visual literacy as “the ability to navigate, evaluate, and communicate (create and mashup) with visual imagery.” He poses the question: “What exactly is the rationale or framework for the inclusion of visual literacy instruction in education, as it relates to life-long learning? ” My rationale for incorporating these skills, other than the fact that it is mandated in the syllabus, is that students who do not have these skills are not fully literate and are locked out of the conversation around them.

David Jakes breaks his rationale into the following:

“There is a biological basis for visual communication

The auditory nerve transmits sound to the brain and is composed of about 30,000 fibers. Contrast that with the optic nerve which sends visual signals to the brain through 1 million fibers (Burmark 2002). Basically, you’ve got a dial-up connection from the ear to the brain and broadband from the eye to the brain.

Add to that:

Humans process images an amazing 60,000 times faster than text.
According to Time magazine, the vocabulary of the average 14-year-old dropped from 25,000 words in 1950 to only 10,000 words in 1999. I do not take that to mean that students are less articulate, but that they communicate in a different way – a way that is faster, more succint (think twitter) and image-laden.

“Emotion, depicted through visual means, sells the message. Students must learn how to convey meaning emotionally. That’s why digital storytelling, when done right, can be such a powerful learning experience.” He links to the inspirational 4 Generations: The Water Buffalo Movie, which is a great example.

“The most powerful producer of visual imagery is the individual, it’s you.”

Digital cameras, cell phone cameras, citizen journalism, photos of the London subway bombings, of Saddam Hussein’s execution and 435,558,403 million photos at Flickr attest to the capability and absolute raw power of the individual to produce visual material and bring the world home. But simply producing this is not enough, because…

They have do something with that visual imagery and it has to be done the right way.”

“Individuals must be capable of working in multiple mediums to create visual messages, in accordance with the principals of visual literacy.

They have to do something with that visual imagery and it has to be done the right way. Create. Remix. Mashup.”

And to cut to the chase: “Being visually literate is just as important as reading and writing and should be considered a fundamental literacy of a 21st Century education.”

The significance of visual literacy can be seen when you compare Karl Fisch’s Did You Know presentation (which has been viewed more than 2 million times) to the mashups by others. While it certainly fulfilled his aim to “create a conversation”, I found the first one lacklustre and problematic in a number of ways. The tone created by the music didn’t seem to fit with the message and the presentation had a number of non sequiturs: for example, it isn’t explained why it is significant that China will become the number one English speaking country in the world… I’d like to think that this means that it is important for students to engage in internationalised education and to understand the world outside the confines of the nation/culture that they are educated in. However, education in China is dependant upon a rote-learned, instructional mode and discourages the questioning of authority, which is an important aspect of critical thinking. However, despite the “they are going to take us over, if we don’t do something” elements of Did You Know, the presentation addresses passionately the need for innovation in education and advocates a new way of looking at how we educate children and the implications of the exponential technological changes we all face.

The new versions that followed the original were much more engaging and eliminated some of the “us versus them” language. In terms of design, this demonstrates the importance of intended audience and younger viewers are used to more bang for their buck in terms of visuals. Check out the changes and see what you think.

Original Did You Know?

Did You Know 2.0?

As Karl Fisch wrote: “Some folks will prefer the original, some will prefer this version, some will dislike both. For me, it’s just another attempt to create a conversation, so I hope that it does.”

Remix 1

Visually, this slideshare remix is effective:

[slideshare id=33834&doc=shift-happens-23665&w=425]

Of all the videos making the rounds about web 2.0 and education, I’d prefer this remix by Bionic Teaching:
Download: Posted by bionicteaching at TeacherTube.com.

Image: http://www.azure-graphicdesign.com/media/graphics/newban_04.jpg