Considers how too often theories about how to write and read images are limited to a functional view, which stresses objectivity, ignores interpretation, and sees design as preset layout formulae. Argues for a configural view of images that stresses their artificiality and cultural significance and articulates design in strategic terms by…

Explains the visual and computing demands of Web-site authoring in a junior level, undergraduate honors course at a large public university. Argues that the students in this course--highly literate and skilled in the production of conventional printed academic writing--performed much like basic writers when challenged with acquiring a broad set of…

Contemporary culture has become increasingly dependent on the visual, especially for its capacity to communicate instantly and universally. Advances in technology fueled this shift. Students must learn to cope with and intelligently contribute to a culture rife with easy access to the visually rich Web, photo dependant social networks, video…

A study used semiotics to examine the graphic elements within corporate trademarks. The trademarks from 247 "Fortune" 500 corporations were placed into 86 different categories of graphic elements intended to connote 14 different qualities. Subjects, 40 college students and 61 business professionals, evaluated 9 sets of 12 trademarks in…

Described is a college-level art activity that teaches aesthetic literacy to entry-level art education majors. Students are asked to bring to class and to discuss two objects--one, an art object, and the other a nonart object. The article also presents thematic categories for the generation of aesthetic concepts. (RM)

Presents a structure for a film and video production course, with emphasis on three types of literacy: visual, verbal, and technical. (HTH)

This digest explains the concept of visual literacy in science and provides a guide to resources for further study. The case is made that the capacities to both understand and generate technical pictures are fundamental to scientific and technological literacy for students at many levels, from early elementary school to the university level.…

A small campus of an American university located in Vienna, Austria, which has typically focused on management courses, seeks to introduce a new kind of art program. Planners developed an art major with a sociological emphasis on visual culture. Students are given a chance to explore the images they are bombarded with every day and to gain new…

Outlines a study in which television advertising supplied the text that college students were challenged to interpret. Explains that the language and images of this advertising posed a complex, cognitive challenge--even to these students at advanced levels of education. Concludes that information processing of television advertising presents a…

This paper traces the history of motion pictures from Thomas Edison's vision in 1887 of an instrument that recorded body movements to the development of synchronized sound-motion films in the late 1920s. The first synchronized sound film was made and demonstrated by W. K. L. Dickson, an assistant to Edison, in 1889. The popular acceptance of…

Identifies two lines of development in art education which require immediate attention if increased media utilization and effective production and consumption of media programs are to become a reality by the year 2000. (Author)

Findings revealed no significant response differences due to mode of presentation. The study provides support for the proposition that mode of presentation has little systematic effect on untrained subjects' evaluations of paintings. (Author/RM)

Beardsley's explanation of how works of art have the capacity to give an aesthetic character to human experience provides a justification for art education in the schools. His major work, "Aesthetics," and subsequent writings that have a bearing on art education are discussed. (Author/RM)

Attempts to bring composition studies into a more thoroughgoing discussion of the place of visual literacy in the writing classroom. Argues that throughout the history of writing instruction in the United States the terms of debate typical in discussions of visual literacy and the teaching of writing have limited the kinds of assignments educators…

Argues that the use of visuals specifically designed to complement printed instruction can significantly improve student achievement of certain types of educational objectives, but that visualization itself represents only a mild rehearsal strategy which will not always optimize student achievement of the more complex levels of learning. (RS)