Chapter+11


 * Doug**

This chapter was my least favorite chapter of the entire book. It wasn't that it was not interesting, but because I got little to know value out of it. The first part, the interesting part, gave a great timeline of the history of technological advances in our society. I enjoy history and enjoy seeing how far we have come in our society. It was amazing to think that only 20 years ago there was no such thing as the internet, and today almost everyone I know uses that tool and depends on that tool on a daily basis. The second part of the chapter described how we need to use this as educators, but they told us what we already knew, students learn better visually. What made it even worse, is how they went on and on about the brain being able to process images better rather than text, and how asking our students "to do the traditional reading of long passages of uniterrupted text is like trying to fit a round peg in a square hole" (p. 122), when here we are reading this book with pages upon pages of uniterrupted text. There are very few images in this entire book and none in this chapter! I think they authors need to practice what they preach.

Cindy- Teaching visually is not a new concept. When a teacher is a visual learner herself she tends to teach visually more often then not. Over my twenty-three years of teaching, I have seen an increase in visual learners each year. According to this article [|visual learner]this learner has some distinctive traits or qualities such as prefering images,pictures, colors, and maps to organize information and communicate with others. Many of these learners go into the fields of "visual art, architecture, photography and other visual related fields." So if we as educators can coin into the way they think which most them like to draw, map or create we will connect more quickly with our lesson plans we are required to teach. However, a lot of across the curriculum skills can be taught in these visual project; especially, the language art skills of reading, writing, grammar and communication. Speaking of language arts and the importance of these skills I like the way the author addressed reading in this chapter. Particularly, how he organizes the reading into the three categories of traditional reading, visual reading, and visual communications. I remember back in the early nineties when I taught fifth grade we did teach visual discernment in some of drug and alcohol units. But, I have not seen it since and it seems it has fallen by the wayside. I believe "counterbalance" is the key " balance In this article, the Heritage teachers use internet resources to supplement units for study. They take "traditional thematic reading units with resources from the the Internet, including virtual field trips to support reading instruction by providing information on authors and information related to the literature the classes are reading." Even though, I think this is a great idea I believe the way we instruct in teaching is definitely going to change including skills and reading strategies. Should be very interesting and how will the reading specialist's role change?

The English language is not what it used to be. In fact, about 25,000 new words are added every year. In Chapter 11, the authors introduce a new word, “alliterate," or someone who knows how to read, but doesn’t. Their explanation for someone being “alliterate” is quite evident nowadays since “visual content is overwhelming textual content in the digital environment” (118). In other words, reading page after page of text is tedious and dull as compared to being swiftly swept from one link to another link of short passages that allow quick and easy scanning. Sure, it is the “MTV World” and newspapers and books are practically passé, so who in their right mind wouldn’t want to surf the Web and have instant waves of information rolling onto their surfboard? Once again, the authors call for educators to rethink their teaching methods by incorporating visual communication into the classroom with the emphasis being to help students understand what the visual world is actually saying. After all, whether a real surfer or Web surfer, riding a wave can sometimes be a real challenge. And, as an English teacher, I feel obligated to mention that the authors also remind us that even though the digital generation lives in a visual world, we should not totally abandon our traditional world of teaching literature (//Sigh!)// Now that would be what I call a wipeout! For more, see related article on DIigo.
 * Diane**

**Felicia** I don’t think it come as much of a surprise that most people are visual learners (about 65%). I think our eyes are immediately drawn to pictures rather than text (I think sometimes a picture conveys things that text can’t). I know from my experiences, teachers are teaching visually (pictures, graphic organizers, and charts) however, the technology component is usually not in place. I think the idea of teaching students how to construct effective visual communication will provide them with relevant, real-world skills. As far as motivating students to read, I think if it can be connected to student interest and technology student will be more motivated to want to read. For example, at the elementary level maybe allowing students to choose some books that are interesting to them to read and then having them create a visual to explain to the class what the story was about, and maybe even post it online. Just a thought, but it’s out of the box and I think they would really buy into it. When I was on Education World I found a tool called Glogster that can be used to create some really cool visuals! Check out this one on pond animals-Glogster-Pond Animals I also came across 21 Things for the 21st Century Educator it has some res ources for visual learning, digital story telling, and collaboration tools just to name a few!

I am going to continue with the theme that seems to have been started by Doug and continued so nicely by Cindy, Diane, and Felicia. We all know our students learn better when lesson content is supported by some sort of visual aid. People as a wole but especially our students of the 21st century remember more of what they see rather than what they simply read or are told. In Chapter 8 we were told we must get of the stage but in this chapter we are told we must teach our students visually. Well how can we do this if we are off the stage and the students are teaching themselves? Seems like a contradiction to me. Doug makes a great point to support this by pointing out that we must teach our students visually rather than reading all the time yet the authors do not follow their own advice. I also like Cindy's point about how even teachers today are visual learners ourselves so we totally understand that that is how our students are going to learn. The authors act like we do not know this and therefore are not doing this in our classrooms. When I was a student teacher at Phillipsburg HS eight million years ago my co-op teacher taught every lesson ewith visuals and as little text and reading as he could and his students loved it and did well. When I took over the classes I continued his style so that the students did not have to get used to another teaching style and because I loved my co-op's approach and wanted to do this myself. I still teach this way today. Even with the limited amount of technology I have available I still incorporate visuals in my teaching because I know my students will undersrtand and remember the content better with visuals than without. The web site connected to this link provides sample lessons in every discipline using a visual based approach. Also, it gives a list of "issues" visual learners have in the classroom when lessons do not use visuyals and how they think and process information. I would encourage everyone to visit this site: [|**visual teaching strategies**]
 * Nick**


 * Adam**

Similarly, I agree with all of the above statements and findings. I think the whole connection of visual learning (especially) with today's kids really does have to do with how we are wired. For instance, with technology, almost everything that is used on a daily basis involves some sort of visual stimulation. Years ago, we did not necessarily need that extra stimulation. Simply turning on the radio was fine. Now we need to add everything under the sun to the media to make it interesting.

Here is a great article noting the levels of achievement gained in Mathematics by programs including visual learnign strategies.

Visual Learning in Math

I think this is imperitive information to grasp because it shows that this whole switch in how we teach and do things in the classroom really works, and has great affects on the students.

Jen
I completely agree with the authors' stance that teaching a love of literature is important, but I can see how some teachers are getting away from it for fear of test scores. Again, I must say, that if we teach students to think critically (and teaching literature correctly will do this), then our students will be able to perform better on state tests. Just imagine, if we taught all of the reading strategies with the harder pieces of literature, then the students would easily be able to transfer those skills to the passages on the reading tests. Also in order to foster a love of reading outside of the classroom, teachers and students can share their book lists on line now on sites like Goodreads.com This is a great way to bring the typical reading lists into the 21st century in a way that all teachers, tech savy or not, can handle.

Since I am an avid reader and I understand how much reading is necessary to create a vivid imagination, we must keep it in our classrooms if we plan on fostering any type of creativity in our students. How will they know how to create if they do not have good models to follow? We are moving toward a more right-brained approach to things, and creativity is a big part of that! We need to make sure we tap into it as much as possible!