Visual Essay

[Debbie Abilock]

Just read an article by Janette Hughes and Sarah Tolley, (2010) "Engaging students through new literacies: the good, bad and curriculum of visual essays" English in Eduction 44(1) 5-26 which proposes an academic alternative to the essay. I've tried to capture the essence below:

• Focus: To explore a piece of literature or capture the human experience of social problems
• Form: Relies on images with minimal text, “entails new forms of semiotic processing of the combinations of the visual, audio, textual, gestural and spatial”(5)
• Task: Consider elements of design, choosing the most appropriate features for effectively communicating a message to an audience
• Skills: Producers must be critical readers who understand  how modes work together to communicate meaning to make design and multimodal choices

 A posted example, called Gavin's Visual Essay, demonstrates the concept - and they have a rubric in the article.  It seems to focus on critical literacy...

Is anyone doing visual alternatives to essays?

Debbie Abilock, NoodleTools/NoodleTeach

http://www.NoodleTools.com

"It is important that students bring a certain ragamuffin barefoot irreverence to their studies; they are not here to worship what is known, but to question

it."  -- J. Brownowski

 

[Ryan Goble]

Hey Debbie, you might also copy and paste post this in the Art/Visual Culture group discussion forum (in fact see this post there by a JAAL author) and the Poets and Writers discussion forum and see if any of those folks have used the form. If it is in one of those groups I can broadcast it on crowdsource Monday!

Thanks for sharing your ideas!

RRG:)

[Ryan Goble]

Re-reading this and watching your example - you might really be talking about digital storytelling - you can do this the old school way - (see the incredible photo essays in John Berger's classic book Ways of Seeing. Or like the example you're sharing above - you might use a music video like this as a model..

[Debbie Abilock]

Media That Matters has some amazing work! Janette Hughes and Sarah Tolley (see attached) would probably see many similarities, as you can see from their abstract:

"In this article, we share our experiences working with students to read and/or write visual essays, texts that rely more heavily on images with minimal print text. We explore how students consider elements of design as they create a visual essay, which entails new forms of semiotic processing of the combinations of the visual, audio, textual, gestural and spatial. In particular, we share a case study of how one adolescent engages with an alternative to the standard essay format when he is not restricted by the use of words alone, but is encouraged to tap into the affordances of digital media, expressing himself multimodally by using words, images and sound."

[Kelly Farrow]

I shared your comments and example w/ our 6th-grade teachers, and they may want to do something like this for their persuasive writing piece. I'd love any tips, suggestions, or words to the wise that anyone may have!

[Debbie Abilock]

When I asked Janette more about the instructional design, she said:

"We ran the session for the class doing Lord of the Flies in a very similar fashion to a writers’ workshop approach. We had them brainstorm, write their ideas in an outline while at the same time giving them online access so they could work with images and text simultaneously. This was intentional as we didn’t want to favour a 'write the text first and then illustrate it' approach (as you say, this is more of an ‘add-on’). We wanted to see how they worked back and forth between image and print text. They had all done 5 paragraph essays before, in the traditional format, so they understood that they needed to develop a thesis statement and then sustain their argument throughout the piece. They had opportunities to peer edit, self edit and conference with the teacher. The classroom was a real hive of activity."

When I asked her about challenges, talked about sufficient access: "...most of the students we worked with had their own laptops or could do some of the work at home on computers. If you do this in a typical school setting where there is a designated “lab” you might find access/time a challenge. I’ve done a lot with digital poetry in a classroom context and that was easier, but even then, the students ended up using a lot of their own technologies from home (either brought them in or used them at home)."

I hope you'll share your experience here, Kelly, as it unfolds.

[Annie Magness]

A little late responding, but a great tool to do visual presentations is voicethread.com.

It links to the digital archives of NY Public Library which are an amazing resource. There are different types of accounts, free ones that have some limitations or school accounts that cost a fee but less restrictions.

Also. its a pretty intuitive program to use and has multiple ways of letting people respond to the presentation.