This article begins with a synopsis of the film "Edward Burtynsky: Manufactured Landscapes", directed by Jennifer Baichwal. While the author can relate to the statements made in this synopsis, her experience and understanding of this 90-minute journey is much more intense and complex. In this essay, she attempts to dissect and examine…

Describes two hours in the life of an eight-year-old to demonstrate that children acquire information and develop language skills from multiple sources. Argues that the conceptualization of literacy must be broadened from reading and writing skills to a definition that recognizes the layering of information and that includes all forms of the…

Notes that basing composition almost exclusively on verbal instruction counters the very nature of literacy education, because the current verbal-based education system produces illiterates in this highly visual and multimodal modern society. Demonstrates composition's verbal bias; argues that this bias is both politically and rhetorically…

Discusses ways in which the integrated design of all the components of picture books can facilitate both visual and verbal literacy, allowing children to refine literary and aesthetic appreciation and improve their own expressive activity. A bibliography of well-designed picture books is provided. (16 references) (CLB)

Examines two issues: whether different modes of presentation used by communication media require their own unique brand of literacy, and whether the consequences of one kind of literacy, e.g., television literacy and all of its skill components, may affect those of another kind. (MBR)

This paper will explore aspects of past practice and belief and how relevant these are to the future. New Zealand Curriculum guidelines for English will be examined in relation to best practice. Oral and visual texts will be discussed, as will the blurring of the boundaries between written and visual text with examples from picture books and…

This article describes the "Add-a-Page Assignment" in which students choose a picture book to which they would add a page, imitating both the style and artistic medium of the illustrator and the writing style of the author. In this article, the author begins with quotes from students who have very different learning styles and vastly different…

Television has become such an important factor in our culture that it must be made a part of the educational curriculum if our free and democratic society is to survive. Those who know how to use the television medium are able to brainwash the rest of us easily, for most of us are television illiterates. The development of print literacy, opposed…