Images in the Classroom

A few years ago I was reflecting on how best to teach the African Slave Trade to my 9th grade world history students. While there are many different pedagogical approaches to teaching such disturbing and inhumane events and ideas to students, many of these methods require educators to use grade level or above readings and writing assignments. Certainly, these readings can be quite provocative and stimulate great discussion; however, I found that many of my students were so challenged by slave narratives and other primary and secondary documents that the full effect of the atrocities could not be felt. While that year many of my students had more life experience than me in terms of issues they dealt with on a daily basis they lacked the reading skills to match their maturity. For many educators this is certainly a problem—struggling readers with the ability to process complex and mature concepts and topics. As I brainstormed how best to take on this pedagogical challenge it led to reflection on how to best engage students in topics that are sometimes controversial, emotional, and unimaginable. The answer was clear—images.
As this week’s readings suggest, images are able to stimulate ideas and express meaning and stories. Further, they can encourage analysis and synthesis. For this particular lesson my goal was for students to understand:

1) the effects of European enslavement on the indigenous peoples of the Americas,
2) the role of African tribes in selling/trading slaves to Europeans,
3) the European conquest of African villages,
4) the experience of the Middle Passage including slave revolts and conditions aboard the slave ships, and
5) the arrival of the slave, the slave auction, and life on the plantation

To accomplish these goals I collected images of each part of the slave experience. Before presenting these images to the students we discussed the process of analyzing images and the power that an image can convey. After modeling an image analysis, students were organized into groups of three and given an envelope of images. The first task required students to place the images in order. During this phase, students were able to see the chronology of the experience and see the “big picture” of what had occurred. While this could have been done through a reading as well, being able to hold on to the pictures and creating a visual timeline for students made the ideas and events more tangible. Once students believed that the pictures were arranged in the appropriate order they articulated to me why the order that they had was correct. The next step required students to do an analysis of each image. This demanded students to look at particular details just as they would read for in a printed text. Students were encouraged to look for expression, types of weapons, clothing, etc. for each image in a step-by-step process. The end result was that students were able to breakdown each event/phase of the atrocity and talk about each with a strong sense of understanding. During the image analysis process students were also asked to develop discussion questions and write a list of questions to further inquiry to stimulate further exploration. The last phase of the lesson required students to take what they learned from the images and discussion and write a letter to slave.

Since I developed this lesson I have done it every year and found it incredibly successful. Students engage with the images and are able to create more connections than had I simply used slave narratives or other primary and secondary sources. The images encourage students to think critically and “see” history in front of them versus that of “reading” history. Since this activity I’ve had an increased appreciation for incorporating images in the classroom, especially when the topics lend themselves to challenging themes.

Do School Libraries Need Books?

As some of you may know, I'm not a GSLIS student. My current home department is the Computer Science department. I found this debate over at the New York Times on libraries interesting, and I would like to hear some of your comments on the topic. The debate concerns whether or not we still need physical books in libraries with, among other things, the increasing use of e-readers and the ever decreasing amount of books actually being checked out or browsed. I personally hate reading anything longer than a blog post on a screen and kill lots of trees printing things (I promise I print double-sided and with multiple sheets on each side of the page!), but I'm curious. What do some of you think?

Social Media Revolution

Here's a fun and interesting video highlighting the impact that social media is having on the global economy and society.

Walter Benjamin article

I think it’s fairly accurate to say that Walter Benjamin and I have little in common. He truly understood art and I don’t. Even though I don’t consider myself to be an aficionado of the arts, I have felt a sense of appreciation for certain works. I can remember when I saw ‘The Thinker’ on a traveling exhibit or when I was viewing various paintings and the like at the British Museum in London during my one trip overseas. However, the reproduction of art in the modern world is of little concern to me and I think the claims here of negative fallout because of photography or moving pictures isn’t warranted. I understand that things do lose their ‘aura’ when you’re not seeing the original but in the grand scheme of things, this is inconsequential. If anything, seeing art through a picture online or in a print magazine only makes me want to see the original a little more if possible. That is probably why I did go with my mom when I was in junior high to see the Rhodan exhibit because I’d seen its representation elsewhere and here was a chance to see it in person. It’s like the difference between hearing your favorite musical artist’s music through some media and still wanting to see them in concert because you’d seen the representation of them already.
I could only agree with the author in the idea that seeing in person is better for appreciating the artwork’s intrinsic value, but not completly . I think of the difference of seeing a movie in the theater and seeing it at home on dvd-there’s just something about being there that even the best Blue-ray, 1080 pixeled flat screen, home theatre system home environment can’t beat. At least, I think so as I don’t own any of these home entertainment devices. Benjamin may be right that the live performance is better than the movie production since the live actors can feed off of or adjust to the audience present with them as opposed to those actors who can only hope they’ve truly conveyed the screenplay’s intent with the help of the producer and/or director. However, I prefer the movie theater and its product for the opposite reason that Benjamin seems to think makes the live stage preferable-the artificiality. To see the set in-person just emphasizes that this isn’t real, just like witnessing an actor’s live gaff. These things only make me realize just how fake this production is and that to me takes away some of that ‘aura’ that a film’s editing and special effects can do away with without the audience even knowing, thus maintaining that believability. I do however agree that more often than not, you can better reflect on a painting or physical work of art better than you can most films. At least in a movie theater you can’t go back and rewind though since the emergence of dvr players, I’ve wanted to a time or two. Many people though can think of movies which have moved them and which have stuck with them even though they’d only seen them once. In this day and age, if you didn’t get the full meaning of a film it’s not difficult to go and pick up a copy of it on dvd to rent or own.

Ten Quick Ways to Analyze Children's Books for Sexism & Racism

I had this sent to me, and thought it fit in pretty well with this week's readings.
(PDF)

Wired Kids, Negligent Parents?

In the wake of the Kaiser Family Foundation's newest report on media in the lives of young people, a four-part opinion series at the New York Times: http://bit.ly/dB7ijR

Revisiting Visual Culture

As I began to delve into the world of visual literacy this week, I was immediately confronted with ideas that had been introduced to me during my undergraduate years studying art education pedagogy. Issues about critically analyzing and producing images have always been central to art education, however, traditionally these images have always been those which were designated “fine art.” And while tradition has mostly prevailed in art education, there have been pushes for something new with the changing times.

In reviewing the articles and websites this week I was reminded of one of these grassroots art education movements called Visual Culture in Art Education (VCAE). I only remembered it vaguely, because it was not seen as “best practice” in my undergraduate institution. I mostly remembered the criticisms, that VCAE leveled works of fine art with things such as advertising, consumer products and comic strips. Also, it was said that the enormous breadth of VCAE made it too difficult to teach in the time allotted for the arts in schools. But as I sat there trying to recall more, I quickly was at a loss. I decided that in the spirit of this week’s topic that I would do some research into this topic.

I searched through old copies of Art Education (The Journal of the National Art Education Association) with the vague memory of an issue focusing on VCAE. Finally I found it, the November 2005 issue with the title, “Oh, No! It’s the Return of Visual Culture!” complete with image of a deformed swamp monster clutching a paintbrush. This was precisely as I remembered the art education movement, as a destructive and debilitating force against tradition. But of course, I had no foundation for this assertion, it was simply what I had been taught (and too naive to question). So I proceeded to read the publication from front to back. I learned that VCAE was truly an all-encompassing study of visual culture which includes the traditional visual arts along with popular culture images, folk art, industrial, interior, package and graphic design as well as photography, commercial illustration, entertainment media and the internet. It is truly a study of our visual world. The proponents of VCAE recognize the potency of these images and the effects on children growing up in the midst of these influences. With the fine arts as such a small portion of the visual world, they assert, why is arts education so focused on these antiquated traditions of high art?

I was surprised at how much seemed so relevant to my thinking today. I have always felt that students seemed ill-equipped to analyze the bombardment of visual stimuli around them. With advertising, television and the internet as a constant, unrelenting force in everyone’s life it is essential that we know how to filter this information and critique it. And yet in art education we tend to focus only on the high arts (mainly painting, drawing and sculpture). While I love these images and recognize their importance, I also wonder if it is enough to study these visual images and call it a quality arts education.

It is actually one of the many reasons why I am moving from the realm of art education to librarianship. It’s not that I now think the arts to be irrelevant, but the expectations put upon art teacher from staff, parents and administration was beginning to wane on me. It seemed to me that the arts in schools are a frill, an extra that could easily be replaced or eliminated at a moments notice. I knew that parents and administration expect conventionally beautiful (or even “cute”) artwork to grace the walls of the school and see that as a symbol of a quality arts program. And being a non-tenured teacher there is a lot of pressure to live up to that standard. However in reading these articles that dissected this Visual Culture art movement, I became once again inspired. These were the ideas that brought me to art education in the first place. The concept that children could learn to analyze a visual image and speak intelligently about its meaning, whether it be a painting by Da Vinci or an advertisement by McDonald’s. The idea that art isn’t limited to museums or the elite, that you can surround yourself with culture. I cannot wait to infuse my teaching with these new ideas and to bring visual literacy into my teaching. Perhaps I am not a complete convert to VCAE, but I am certainly glad that I revisited its teachings. And in addition, it also makes me happy to think that the role of the school librarian is no longer limited to the gatekeeper of books. The title of School Library Media Specialist allows me to introduce and explore the various forms of media to my young students, including visual media. And that is truly an exciting prospect.