Visual Literacy: Why we need it?

Dr. Kennedy in his TEDx talk covers a lot of information about visual literacy and if you do not want to go through all the 16 minutes I picked up some highlights of it below?

• Visual literacy is the ability to construct meaning through images
• Visual literacy is not a new concept: In 1969 International visual literacy association was established
• Humanity took 2500 years to get to typing / printing information
• But only another 500 years to where we are now!
• Everything is an image and a text: Visual literacy is multi modal, multi disciplinary, interdisciplinary and collaborative.
• 90% information taken in by a human is visual
• 30% of brain cortex is dedicated to vision
• We shall look, see, describe, analyse, interpret and construct meaning
• Why is it that educational leaders do not think about including visual literacy as an interdisciplinary part of curriculum and not only as visual arts subject?

I, myself agree with Dr. Kennedy that it is through images that we learn. It has been proven time and again through so many research and educational works that visual literacy is more important than any other forms of literacy required by the human.

You might not realize it, but your brain is a code-cracking machine.

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From: LiveScience

What I have quoted above is an example of “Typoglycemia” which I believe utilises the power of visual literacy in our brain. Even the words are stored in form of a shape in our brain and as long as the outward shapes of the word are recognisable it does not matter which order the characters are arranged within!

I have so many examples to give in order to express my belief about the importance of images in our lives and the role they play in our learning. We all know subliminal messages and the research which has gone into it. We now watch more than we read. The technological revolution has assisted our ability to consume more via images. So much so that I just read this article today in BBC. What do you think about this article? Do you think we have become too visual? I am not sure of the answer but one thing I agree with. We have digital image overload!

Imagine what the reaction of world could have been if there were no handheld camera integrated devices to record the Charlie Hebdo shootings and then no TV and Internet to spread it around the world in minutes! Imagine how the political conflicts and wars are manipulated simply via images! This subject is too deep for me to cover in one post hence will continue to ponder over my thoughts on this and establish a way to communicate them with you: my audience. Excuse me if I start using imagery to convince you of my point! 🙂