A Public Service Announcement! ;)

A Public Service Announcement! ;)

Tuesday, November 28, 2006

Multiple Literacies Link

Here are some websites that focus on multigenre, multimodal, or otherwise "New" literacies. I'll add links as I find them, and feel free to add your own in the comments section as well. Please do take a second to give a brief description of the link you offer.

A Question of Literacy: Visual Literacy: A good definition of visual literacy as well as some important links.

Reading Next: An Alliance for Excellent Education project. From the site: "Reading Next is a cutting-edge report that combines the best research currently available with well-crafted strategies for turning that research into practice. Informed by five of the nation's leading researchers, Reading Next charts an immediate route to improving adolescent literacy." Follow the link, look at the materials, and see what you think.

Arts Education Partnership publications: Excellent sources. Especially in terms of sequential art, we sometimes forget that when we're reading a graphic novel in class, we're automatically engaging in cross-curricular endeavor. Those images didn't just appear; they were crafted and created. There's a process to study in them just as there is in the writing, and in the study of the overall form the words and images create in tandem. Arts literacy is literacy.

Champions for Change: A report from AEP that I find particularly compelling.

A History of Early Visual Media: A little hard to navigate but worth a look. It deals mostly with early cinema, pre-cinema, film and photography.

IVLA: The International Visual Literacy Association. Great organization that reaches across disciplines. From the site: "IVLA was formed for the purpose of providing a forum for the exchange of information related to visual literacy. We are also concerned with issues dealing with education, instruction and training in modes of visual communication and their application through the concept of visual literacy to individuals, groups, organizations, and to the public in general." Also see this definition of visual literacy.

NCTE Statements on Multimodal Literacy: See what NCTE has to say about MML.

NCTE and Visual Literacy: Doing a search for multimodal literacy and/or visual literacy on the NCTE website will probably yield more results, but here's a link to a minor source from a few years back. Note that visual literacy in education isn't just a 21st century notion.

The On-line Visual Literacy Project: Very cool site from Pomona College. Multimodal in layout, it offers many videos, voice overlays, and graphics to explain visual literacy and its many component parts. It focuses on explication of elements of design and doesn't tie back directly to other literacies, sort of an art about art approach. But, with the application of a little intellect, one easily sees how this site is a great resource for any teacher.

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