Abstract
This study aims to investigate how pre-service teachers' visual literacy skills are affected by their use of online photo management and sharing applications like Flickr. Two approaches are used to develop the visual literacy skills of pre-service teachers through Flickr. The first is to help them decode visuals through practicing analysis techniques, and interpreting and creating meaning from visual stimuli. The second is to help them encode visuals as a tool for communication. Visual literacy tests, participants' logs, photograph evaluation instruments, and interviews are used to assess the improvement in the participants' visual literacy skills. The results of the analysis revealed that the pre-service teachers' skills in interpreting, understanding, and appreciating the meaning of visual messages were enhanced through online exchange and interaction by means of photo management and sharing applications. They were able to communicate more effectively through applying the basic principles and concepts of visual design.
Highlights
Today's culture has become so visual that teachers and students get considerable information from visual elements
Visual information usually comes in the form of line drawings, photographs, maps, diagrams, flowcharts, graphs, time lines, geometrical figures, and Venn diagrams
RESEARCH QUESTIONS The study aims to investigate how pre-service teachers' visual literacy skills are affected by their use of online photo management and sharing applications like Flickr
Summary
Today's culture has become so visual that teachers and students get considerable information from visual elements. If literacy is reading and writing, Brill, Kim, and Branch (2000) believe that visual literacy is the ability to interpret, and generate or select images for communicating ideas and concepts They indicated that a visually literate learner should be able to make sense of visible objects, and create static or dynamic visible objects. The ability to engage users in a conversation about a photo, and to update that photo based on comments received, builds a sense of community Another key feature of Flickr is its integration with most of the major blogging services (like Blogger), which allows students and instructors to upload photographs into their blogs with a click of the “Blog this” button. RSS feeds allow teachers to have their students’ projects delivered directly to their browsers, saving the teacher the time-consuming task of having to enter each student’s URL in order to view his/her portfolios
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