Two major phenomena are challenging communications in the early 21 Century: the explosion of electronic documentation that’s inundating our PCs and PDA’s (as in 60 billion "transmissions" each day), and the myriad of colliding languages and cultural icons from the ever-more connected Global Neighborhood. The challenge? “Too Much Information” (of which I address frequently in this blog), and interpretational dilemmas.
The remedy? Digital Visual Literacy. DVL’s been around for a few decades, but now it’s ready to step into its own. DVL refers to the technologies and processes that enable people to communicate (creating, analyzing, etc.) digital images and sounds. Which only makes sense, considering the preponderance of highly visual and highly audible websites, videos, and TV shows; and imagery such as photos, graphs and drawings.
According to IT-Educators Educause, DVL will become as important as textual literacy for learning. Not surprisingly, DVL’s starting to find its way into the classroom – Brown University and Mesa (AZ) Community College just completed a three year grant for exploring that very purpose.
So perhaps pictures really are worth a thousand words – or a million, if abstract ideas can be conveyed “solidly” across cultures who see, think and feel differently than we do.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment