Towards New Media Texts

Visual literacy involves the ability to understand and learn through the use of visual materials and also creating and using visual images to communicate. As I read in the article, many teachers do not practice using visual literacy because it involves a lot of work, time, and a certain amount of status. They have invested precious time in alphabetic literacy. The result of this, in my opinion, is that the students miss out on learning something that could benefit them heavily. Visual literacy is on the rise in everyday life, and students need to start working with this as early as possible to gain valuable knowledge about them.

The article lists several assignments for working with digital literacy, but I especially favor text re-design and re-vision. With the students revising an essay, they are becoming critics and creative thinkers both at the same time. Revising it for the WWW is motivating in itself because most students would want others to see their best work. This assignment integrates literacy and technology and is a good way for students to explore writing and the web.