Contains the following two leadership profiles of individuals who have made significant contributions to the field of instructional technology: "Francis M. Dwyer: Visual Researcher Extraordinaire" (David M. Moore); and "Tribute to John G. Hedberg: Professor of Education, University of Wollongong" (Thomas Reeves). (MES)

Investigates the genres, sign systems, and cueing systems of hypermedia literacy. Contends that increased knowledge of this complex literacy will help educators plan curriculum and evaluate student progress. Explains that the analysis is based on a microethnographic study that investigated hypermedia composition in a seventh-grade language arts…

Suggests that teaching students the processes of video programing helps them become more intelligent video consumers and allows them to use the technology as an extension of themselves by creating art through video. Discusses the use of lighting, sound, and editing in the creative process. (KO)

Twenty children, aged 7-12, with severe visual impairments completed a series of visual tasks requiring interpretation, analysis, manipulation, and visual motor coordination. Findings are discussed in terms of total performance, individual task performance, performance of younger versus older children, and performance of good versus poor readers.…

Presents a lesson plan developed around the work of architectural muralist Richard Haas. Discusses the significance of mural painting and gives key concepts for the lesson. Lists class activities for the elementary and secondary grades. Provides a photograph of the Haas mural on the Fountainbleau Hilton Hotel, 1986. (GG)

Maintains that young children enjoy talking about art and should be given opportunities to do so. Recommends using Parsons' Aesthetic Development Theory as a flexible framework and guideline for discussion. Includes several transcribed discussions between the teacher and her pupils. (MJP)

Offers eight projects and activities designed to make elementary students wiser television viewers and better thinkers. The activities help students get more out of television, determine what is questionable, and develop visual literacy and thinking skills. Children become active consumers of television and other visual media. (SM)

Explores how visual (pictorial) and verbal (linguistic) systems work together and influence each other as young children create symbol systems. Finds that, for young children, color plays a key role in communicating messages. Shows how art and writing (especially color and light) influence each other in children's literacy development. (SR)

Describes how one fourth-grade teacher used television, videos, computers, classroom guests, and lots of reading and writing to engage his students in their language-arts unit, focusing on the book "Shiloh." Discusses how such "intermediality" (using multiple media) increases students' comprehension and understanding of text, capturing their…

Discusses concepts of semiotics relevant to visual literacy and stresses two important points of intersection: active perception and diversity of sign systems. Argues that an educational program with a semiotic framework would change its focus from content to process, and that a visual literacy component would enhance learning across modalities,…

Two experiments examined preschoolers' and adults' relative reliance on visual and verbal information in identification of animals and machines. Findings include both children and adults can use either visual or verbal cues in categorization, and a stricter definition is used in identifying animals. Results suggest that a perceptual to conceptual…

Explores the multilayered nature of a single picture book by Anthony Browne and the sophisticated responses (including their own pictures) children ages 4-11 bring to interpreting such a text. Suggests that some children who are not yet confident at reading print have developed impressive capacities for analyzing image. (SG)

To prosper as adults, students must develop varied literacies, including personal economic skills (understandings of credit, home ownership, retirement planning, taxation, and investing) and social and emotional literacies such as family and personal coping skills. Regarding aesthetic literacy, art should permeate the school environment through…

This article reports on a term's work with students in Initial Teacher Education (ITE) in which the adult classic text Silas Marner was studied in both written and film form (Eliot, 1994; BBCFo, 1985). Through an extended consideration of the structures employed by different forms of narrative, students were invited to consider the knowledge and…

The connectionist theory of brain functioning, which holds that specialization exists within the brain, has three implications for teachers of nonverbal communication. One implication involves the relative emphasis to be placed on linguistic/linear versus nonlinguistic/nonlinear mental processing. Teachers can shift emphasis to nonlinguistic…