The Department of Media and Communications of the Pestalozzianum Zurich (Switzerland) develops materials for media education. This article describes a book on visual competence, a CD-ROM investigating the production and distribution of newspapers, an eight-part TV series on contributions to media education, and a multimedia package about a…

This paper suggests ways in which video can be used in teaching college literature and cinema courses in order to promote audiovisual literacy. The method proposed presupposes an approach to narrative through narratology, the discipline that examines texts of narrative fiction as narratives, irrespective of their mode of manifestation (verbal,…

The goal of the Agam Program is to teach visual literacy to preschoolers. The Agam Project implemented the program in Israel in 1983. This report summarizes the second cycle of research on the program, which was conducted in 1985-87. The Agam Program integrates visual concepts with specific skills and develops specific cognitive processes. The…

"Viewing and Representing in the Middle Years" was a 2-year project to investigate the development of visual literacy in the classrooms of 3 Canadian middle school teachers. These teachers tried a large variety of approaches and were generally optimistic about the increased use of visual materials to make classrooms more inclusive. They…

There are a variety reasons for teaching about Japan. Many students in the United States are of Japanese heritage; Japan is the second largest trading partner of the United States; and some healing still needs to occur between the United States and Japan because of the damage and pain of World War II. Further, the Unites States and Japan share the…

Articulates, through a critical analysis of Atlantic Canada's latest secondary English language arts curriculum documents, the expansion of traditionally understood conceptions of literacy to include information, media, and visual literacies. Examines the specific nature and extent to which technology and computer-mediated curricula are used to…

The ability to interpret information from any source, and increasingly visual sources, is a vital skill for all graduates in contemporary culture. The development of the skills to read visual texts and communicate that understanding requires a certain level of critical thinking and reflection, skills which can only be developed over time, through…

In this article, the authors designed a study to explore what children's own drawings reveal about their viewing skills and to examine the interplay between visual and verbal literacies. Specifically, the authors wanted to determine how two communication systems--visual and verbal literacies--contribute to children's abilities to extract meaning…

Newspaper layout and design studies ignore politics, and most studies of newspaper politics ignore visual design. News layout is generally thought to be a set of neutral, efficient practices. This study suggests that the political position of Peruvian newspapers parallels their visual presentation of terrorism. The liberal "La Republica"…

This book poses fundamental questions about telecommunications as a resource of limited supply increasingly in demand. Topics that are discussed include the expanding needs of and the resources available for visual literacy; the technical, economic, and social issues that relate to the expansion of communication frequencies; the legal problems…

Discusses the importance of cultural geography for understanding the environment and of teaching geography as a form of visual literacy. Notes different concepts of landscape, including landscapes as physical geography, landscapes as texts, and landscapes as a process of identity formation. Examines cultural expressions of geographic visual…

Postcards Home using photography, scanning, digital image manipulation, text and colour printing was the third Download project devised by the education department of the Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, England. It was led by artist Laurie Long with teachers and pupils from Pooles Park primary school in Islington, an inner city borough in North…

For the thirty-sixth year, the Research and Theory Division of the Association for Educational Communications and Technology (AECT) is sponsoring the publication of these Proceedings. Papers published in this volume were presented at the annual AECT Convention in Anaheim, California. The Proceedings of AECT's Convention are published in two…

Films in English are extremely challenging for those studying English as a foreign language. In this study, an attempt was made to make an English film more comprehensible by asking subjects to read an abridged version of the novel the film was based on before seeing the film. Subjects reported that reading the book first increased…

This study investigated what and how preschool children view children's television programs, with a focus on cultural and ecological factors which might affect their visual attention and the nature of their immediate recall of content. The secondary task method (in which an individual is required to perform two tasks simultaneously) was applied to…