Visual Literacy Tool – PictLits
October 24, 2008Troy Hicks 3 Comments »Recently, I was contacted by Carrie Lightner from PicLits.com. She said:
I came across your blog and I thought you might be interested in our new web site, www.PicLits.com. It is a fun and new site that can be a great online teaching tool for educators. It helps get students interested in writing and serves up a fresh image and custom list of words each day.
After checking it out, I agree. I think that the site has the potential to engage visual learners. In particular, I am interested in the idea that you can have students drag and drop words on top of images, and they
could develop haiku-like poems or statements with an image to supplement it. In a sense, it is like using layers in Photoshop to add text to a picture, yet much more user friendly and easily embeddable.
I wonder what kinds of assignments we could ask our students to do using a tool like this?
October 25th, 2008 at 7:35 am
I think you are asking the wrong question.
Instead of asking “what kinds of assignments we could ask our students to do using a tool like this,” you should ask “could this tool be used to accomplish one of my course objectives?”
For effective, efficient teaching, begin by setting out what you want to achieve. Then look for procedures and technologies to help you. For more on this topic, see
http://www.you-can-teach-writing.com/outcome-statements.html
Linda Aragoni
November 8th, 2008 at 12:08 am
Yikes! Are the two propositions really mutually exclusive?
I don’t think this would be the first time a revolution in tooling inspired a new objective.
November 8th, 2008 at 5:01 pm
[...] blog postings, and catching up on the news – the Internet news that is. I happened upon this post, Visual Literacy Tool, introducing PicLits.com. Interesting idea for students to begin thinking about the process of [...]