I’ve just been completing my latest task on the Visual Learning course run by NAACE and MirandaNet which is about the use of images in learning.

Mind map from www.mind42.com here.

Some very important questions were raised about just how images add value to learning i.e. narrative or illustrative, explanatory or instructional, allegory or metaphor, aesthetic, stimulus and what the main issues are for teachers sourcing and using images from the web.

There was also interesting discussion about fitness for purpose. How do we assess an image for fitness for purpose when using it in an educational context?

A couple of things emerged for me - firstly that we should be teaching visual/media literacy techniques - these are not self contained skills but overlap into textual literacy and thinking and reasoning skills.

Both the BFI and Filmstreet have some great ideas for this.

Secondly, that there is a fine balancing act between promoting internet safety and providing experience of sourcing images from the web so that student’s can learn how to do this effectively and safely.

Images add value to learning depending on the context in which they are used and how they are used (how we interact with them).
For example, (from a colleague on the course) the actual doing of ordering images on an IWB that holds the value for teaching and learning - not the images alone. This applies just as equally for ‘narrative or illustrative, explanatory or instructional, allegory or metaphor, aesthetic, stimulus or empathy’.
Here are some examples of how I have used images with students and teachers that illustrate this point:

• Narrative - using Kar2ouche to retell a story from another characters point of view. It’s how the students compose the storyboard and frames within the storyboard that teaches them about viewpoint (visual/media literacy)
• Explanatory- using Photostory to explain how student’s did something such as baking / making / completing a project. It’s how they choose and order the images that affects the outcome.
• Stimulus - we worked with the National Archives to do a videoconference with Y5 students. They were given a painting of Victorian child criminals in a workhouse to learn more about the past. It’s the questions that were asked about the image that bought out the value of the experience.

Here are sonme questions I’m interested in hearing your responses to;

• Where and how do you source images? (and avoid information overload!)
• How do we teach students to effectively source images and credit them?
• Internet safety - How do we balance protecting students with exposing them to real experience and thus learning how to search effectively for images?
• Copyright - to use or not to use a copyrighted image in the classroom?