Evoke emotion
Spark creative stories
And create confusion
In analysing the use of images in the classroom I have used a PMI.
Positives
• Images can spark interest, conversation and story writing.
• Images are worth a thousand words – one image can say more about a topic than words.
• Images can be edited, for example resized or cropped.
• Give students ideas without the teacher explicitly highlighting ideas.
• Creates learning opportunities to highlight the importance of checking the source.
• Creates learning opportunities to analyse copyright and legal sharing rights.
• “New technologies give teachers and students easy access to the means of production and manipulation of images in their classroom” (Fetherston, 2008, p. 17).
Negatives
• There are so many images available, sometimes difficult to find the right one.
• Students sometimes take photos without recognising the source.
• Some of the images are not realistic, after being edited to this point.
Interesting
• There are so many images.
• There are some really interesting images.
• No matter what the topic is, there always seems to be an image available.
• Images can be edited.
Fetherston (2008, p. 29) highlights that when images are used in the classroom they “are brought into the world of discourse and meanings are constructed from and through them”. Therefore it is important, in the classroom that teachers, teach students (“digital natives” who have ease at using and handling images) how to ‘see’, ‘look’ at and ‘read’ images (Fetherston, 2008, p.17).
Images retrieved from Flickr and Worth1000.com
Hi Kelly,
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed looking at the images you have posted!
I also think that images are a great tool for using in the classroom! I think as you have said, images are a great stimulus to use for English strand activities such as story writing or assessment ideas. By presenting your students with these images and saying "Please write me a story about how this makes you feel" you are opening their eyes to the ability images have to evoke emotion, and in the younger year levels, you would even be assisting students to identify and label emotions that they may not have recognised as "emotions" - sometimes it is harder for younger students to understand their feelings and what they mean, but by presenting these images, provides these students with a learning medium.
Also, there is such a variety of students in the classroom isn't there!? So by presenting all students with the same stimulus, you would witness the various ideas that come out of these individual personalities!
I know what you mean though regarding copywrite. Perhaps as the teacher you could pre-select a large variety of images and reference them yourself and then tell your students they are to pick from only that folder of pictures? That way you will have covered this criteria to using images correctly?
Kate
Hello Kelly,
ReplyDeleteI totally agree with your PMI analysis of images and also value their place in the classroom context. The article you referenced from Fetherston (2008) raised some good points. Where did you access this article from?
I thought I would share some of my own PMI analysis with you.
Positive
-Using images in the classroom opens the floor for discussion and demonstrates multiple perspectives on an image or topic.
-There are great tools available like Picasa Photo Viewer and MobaPhoto that assist us when editing photos and images.
-Images are a suitable and preferred medium for visual learners and students who struggle with written text.
-Images allow students to experience target content with a variety of senses.
- When selected appropriately images can help students connect to the target content by provoking emotion, creating humour or allowing them to visualize personal connections.
-Giving students the opportunity to edit and manipulate images allows them to acknowledge that images can be changed and that they need to be critical viewers of images.
Minus
-Poor selection of images could create misconceptions and generalizations about topics.
- Students could take the image for face value and not look beyond.
Interesting
-Using images in our classroom exposes students to a whole new level of literacy, known as visual literacy. They must develop the meaning-making systems to decode the abundance of information presented in an image.
-Images are often a tool used by early readers to make meaning for text that they cannot read or do not understand.
-Critical literacy of images must be developed so students realize images can be altered and are not all “true” to life.
After further evaluation, I believe the use of images need to be included in the classroom context and as learning managers we must encourage our students to look beyond the surface level of images and help them become visually literate individuals. I also agree with you comments about copyright and think Kate’s suggestion of pre-selecting images for our students and putting them into an accessible folder is a great idea. I have actually seen this done in my school placement and it works wonders. It ensures students are legally accessing images, limits exposure to inappropriate material, saves time in the classroom and overcomes image searches that are blocked by Education Queensland.
Thanks for your great insights ladies and let me know what you think about my analysis.
Regards
Pauline
Hi Pauline and Kate,
ReplyDeleteFirstly, Kate I think your idea for overcoming the copyright issue is great. I think having a referenced image bank would work well at reducing the issues.
However I think that doing this in the older grades is taking an accountability from them to reference, search for appropriate images and use time wisely in the search process. Therefore I think time should be spent teaching them how to source and reference images. This way when they get to High School they know where to look. I think there could possibly be a bank of useful websites that have images relating to the topic rather than just the referenced images. Thanks for the suggestions Kate.
Secondly, Pauline what a great, detailed analysis you have. I really love the interesting point about critical literacy needing to be developed, I think this is crucial in this 21st century.
With regard to the Fetherston article, I found it at http://atje.education.ecu.edu.au/issues/PDF/333/Fetherston.pdf
Thank you both for your ideas and analysis.
Kelly