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Visual Literacy

Provides information on citing images, copyright, presentation best practices, design guidelines, and more

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Approaches to Visual Rhetoric at Vis (UT Austin)

This website has an extensive selection of information on visual analysis.

 

Art, Design, and Visual Thinking (Cornell)

This is an easily navigable and comprehensive online textbook from Cornell University concerned with the subjects related to art, design, and visual thinking.

 

Taxonomy of Visual Communication and a Bibliography

This is a taxonomy and comprehensive bibliography of materials related to the study of visual literacy.

 

Visual Literacy from Kent State University

This is a guide to topics covered in the study of Visual Literacy.

 

Visual Thesaurus (online edition)

This website hosts an interactive dictionary and thesaurus which creates visual word maps with words stemming from related terms.

 

What is a Print?

This is a quick overview of woodcut, etching, lithography, and screenprinting techniques.

Brain Connection

This website hosts numerous, heavily illustrated articles on the way that the brain and sensory organs function together. It also has interactive exercises to emphasize these relations.  

 

Exploratorium: Seeing

The Exploratorium website hosts a number of interactive online exhibits focused on optical illusions and the way they relate to the ways we perceive things visually.

 

Zom Art

Self-described “most comprehensive collection of optical and sensory illusions on the world wide web.” Also, see archived version.

 

Laboratory for Scientific Visual Analysis

This website for Virginia Tech’s Lab for Scientific Visual Analysis hosts information on linking research and education. It is primarily for use by Virginia Tech faculty and students.

Bad Human Factors Designs

This website provides numerous examples of potentially useful items whose functionality is hindered by bad design.

 

The Graphic Organizer

Contains a number of blank forms and flowcharts that can be used by instructors and students to organize various types of information.

 

The Noun Project

This website is a collection of freely usable clipart intended to help “share, celebrate, and enhance the world’s visual language.”

Color Theory (Iowa State)

This is an interesting, deliberately paced presentation about the color wheel and other topics related to color theory from Iowa State University.

Assignments at Viz (UTAustin) 

Provides a number of assignments useful to teachers of visual analysis. 

 

AT&T/UCLA Initiatives for 21st Century Literacies

Contains a large volume of lesson plans for teaching skills related to relatively new technologies. Topics covered include technical skills such as web browsing or note taking techniques as well as more in depth topics concerned with information literacy in the 21st century.

 

How to Teach Media Literacy

This website hosts a number of free articles on teaching media literacy, but the lesson plans and curriculum resources require a subscription for access. 

 

International Center of Photography’s Teacher Resources

This is a resource for those interested in teaching photography. The resources include information on visual literacy and the importance of integrating visual literacy into education (this begins on page 30 of 94 in the PDF linked above).

 

Introduction to Visualization from Hodges’ Health Career Model

These websites contain articles stressing the importance of integrating visual instructional methods into the teaching process. The focus is on teaching for health careers, but the information contain within can be applied to many different disciplines.

 

Visual Literacy Exercise

This is an exercise provided by the Library of Congress to quickly and effectively introduce someone to the fundamentals of visual literacy.

 

Teaching Visual Thinking Strategy

This video discusses teaching visual thinking strategies. The website also contains other media and writings on the subject.

 

Visual Rhetoric and Strategies of Persuasion

 This is the homepage for a course offered in 2003 on the increasing importance of images and their ability to convey certain messages.

Visual Language by Neil Cohn

This is a blog with accompanying articles and links about the study of Visual Language.

 

Viz (UTAustin)

Viz is a blog explores the many ways rhetoric, visual culture, and pedagogy interact with and inform each other. It also contains resources on Visual Rhetoric.

 

Ways of Seeing

This is an article that discusses Yale University Library’s podcast called “Ways of Seeing” (which can be found on iTunesU) featuring Yale students and faculty from various disciplines interpreting artwork.

Focus on Visual Literacy (PBS)

This is a guide for teachers and students interested in finding articles related to the study of visual literacy.

 

LibGuides for Visual Literacy

This website provides access to other visual literacy guides similar to the one you are using right now.

 

LibVisual Studies Writing Guide (Duke)

This is a guide to writing papers related to visual images. It contains information about visual rhetoric and visual literacy. It also contains links to guides for writing about paintings, film, photography, and other subjects.

 

visual-lit

This is a wiki on the subject of visual literacy.

Visual Literacy Portal

This International Visual Literacy Association resource provides links to many different websites related to visual literacy.

 

Visual Literacy resources on the Web

This is an annotated listing of links to different resources related to visual literacy on the web originally provided in College and Research Libraries News.