Visual IQ
Visual communication is so important these days. We are immersed in visual media. One of the reasons that visuals are so important is that they focus our attention and allow individuals to interpret the information from a non-linear format.
Language involves subject-verb-object terminology. Pictures appeal to the student’s imagination. Working with the student’s visual IQ facilitates this process.
Now that I understand the importance of ‘Visual IQ’ I can understand why verb conjugations in French were such a chore. When I first started learning French formally at school in the 1970’s, the text books were full of verb charts typed in tiny Times Roman font.
With the advent of social media platforms, new ways to organise and present verb or vocabulary charts for language learners are readily available for teachers to draw on as resource material. There are so many new and more attractively visual ways to engage with language learning.
In the post, I want to highlight the importance of two social media sites – that of Flickr and Pinterest. Both sites offer the ability to share resources that other teachers have curated/collated – or researched and organised.
Could you get your students to make a similar site using Flickr or even create a Pinterest site and clip some of these images to build their own electronic pin board?
This ability to share resources so easily and anonymously is one of the best things about Web 2.0 technologies.
Photo Sets for Japanese and French Language Learning
Specifically, in this post, however, I want to focus on sets of visual photographs for language learning. The first set is wonderful for Japanese teachers. A great set of flickr photos for Japanese teaching can be found here The second set, takes the development of visuals a step further and involves text and pictures. This is great news for French students.
I want to create my own flickr set for literature studies… I could build in famous quotes…. character profiling …. I am inspired mmethomas555 and shibuya246! Visual language – combining words, images and shapes is so important for highlighting different ways of dealing with a subject.
I really like this set of Flickr photos. Very useful for French language learning and teaching.
Teaching Take Away #1 –Do you ask you students to collate their own data by taking photos and uploading to Flickr? Or alternatively, do you use Pinterest and get students to collate other people’s visuals on the Web. Either way, using these highly visual tools to create provides students with additional skills in curation and communication.