Wednesday, January 06, 2016

What is Visual Literacy and Why is it Important to Math Education?

I'm re-looking at visual literacy/personification and math education now that I've agreed to lead a visual literacy/math conversation at our school system's unconference. To me the intersection of visual literacy/personification and math means using images/human qualities to deeply understand, remember, develop, and relay math concepts.  

I wrote about this a long time ago with this post and utilized personification in an introductory math unit this fall. Recently I reached out online to find more connections. Professor Keith Devlin @profkeithdevlin pointed me in the direction of Daniela O'Neill who tweeted to me The Waterloo Center for Child Studies website and a science of reading comprehension article. I also collected many more videos and links which are included beneath the tweet image. I will continue to collect more discussion and information about the topic in days to come because I know that our sense of sight and our ability to personify abstract concepts are powerful resources when it comes to teaching and learning math.




I want to deepen my work with visual literacy in the math classroom.

I'm collecting posts and links here to inform my preparation for the discussion.



George Lucas discusses visual literacy:



Visual Literacy and Dance



Visual Literacy: Implications for the Math Classroom

Common Core Visual Literacy Standards

Power of Visual Teaching

Visual Literacy and Learning in Science

Visual Math Learning

Visuals can help effectively communicate messages