Media literacy, digital literacy and visual literacy

When I think of the skills students will need to be able to participate in future society, I always think of the need to be digitally literate. Until reading the Media Smart information on digital and media literacy, I had never really given much though to the importance of media literacy. Media smart (n.d.) define digital literacy as "personal, technological, and intellectual skills for living in a digital society" and media literacy as "critical engagement with mass media". It is instantly clear how interrelated the two concepts are. 

Personally I see that digital technologies is more about collaborating and operating in a digital environment using digital technologies, whereas media literacy focuses on the use of information and visual literacy to critically analyse and evaluate media.While digital technology is vital, I can now see that media literacy is a higher-order thinking platform that requires digital literacy knowledge and skills to perform a more involved task. Media literacy more accurately reflects and addresses the requirement in the Melbourne Declaration on Educational Goals for Young Australians (2008) for all students to become confident and creative individuals and active citizens in society (MCEETYA, 2008, p. 9).

An important area of media literacy as noted by Media Smart (n.d.) is visual literacy. As the name suggests, is visual literacy is "the ability to view, understand, analyze and evaluate, design and create, and use visual representations for acquisition, consolidation and communication and transfer of knowledge" (Beaudry, 2015, p. 55). The use of visual literacy strategies, such as concept maps and graphic organisers, help students to engage in higher-order thinking such as analysis, evaluation, design and creation (Beaudry, 2015, p. 55). Beaudry (2015, p. 56) states that we live in a "visually-saturated world" and hence interact with visual texts every day. The key is to become visually fluent so that we as teachers and our learners are capable of expertly decoding, 'consuming' and creating visual texts.

This has really led me to believe that my personal use of graphic organisers such as concept maps are a helpful tool for all learners and is not just something that I prefer to use. I have previously and will endeavour to use these where appropriate in my classroom. I have already used them often when planning characters or mapping character development when exploring narratives and when note taking on information texts (to summarise or to prepare to produce). This use has proven to me that visual literacy tools are effective for the vast majority of learners. These readings have simply consolidated that understanding or belief.

References

          Beaudry, J. (2015). Visual literacy for all teachers and learners: essential knowledge and skills to create, use and assess concept maps and graphic organizers.  In S. Younie, M. Leask & K. Burden (Eds.) Teaching and learning with ICT in the primary classroom (2nd ed., pp. 54-70). New York, NY: Routledge.

          Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs (MCEETYA). (2008). Melbourne declaration on educational goals for young Australians. Retrieved from http://www.curriculum.edu.au/verve/_resources/national_declaration_on_the_educational_goals_for_young_australians.pdf
          Media Smart. (n.d.). The intersection of digital and media literacy. Retrieved from http://mediasmarts.ca/digital-media-literacy/general-information/digital-media-literacy-fundamentals/intersection-digital-media-literacy