John Weber said:

"Part of visual literacy is knowing when "to show" something rather than "say it.""

Question from Kim:
How do you decide this moment in your own teaching?  What is an example of a time when you've shown rather than said something?

Comments

[Traci Fordham]

How might we ask our students to represent a course concept or idea without using words? And what would the process of having them do that teach them? How might a concept like (for instance) "metacognition" be thought about and "shown" through a visual image (instead of a verbal representation)?

[Kasarian Dane]

2 thoughts:
First, about when to show something rather than talk about it: I've been teaching a visual culture course for about 6 years now, and I've found that rather than giving more context/background info/history for visuals that I show, I'm giving less and just showing visuals and then discussing afterwards. It's more of a "show them lots of visual stuff" strategy and then let them sort through it and much less me saying, this is where this is from, this is how you should think about this, etc. From a Brice Marden video to Matthew Barney to Chris Burden shooting at an airplane to the Simpson's "art episode" (which by the way mentions Christo's wrapping of the Reichstag), put it out there and let them work thru it.

Second thought: in visual culture, I have students do both a written response to readings, and a visual response in their sketchbook as a way to work thru ideas visually rather than in only written form.

[Erin Colvin]

Our general thoughts at our table are:

Many of us teach using visual literacy, having to show images and diagrams to explain the differnet perspectives.

How do we then convert that into 'saying it' as we are 'showing it.'