Do You See What I See?
Posted by Steve Denniston on March 6th, 2008
Think for a moment about the Mona Lisa painting. When I mention the name, a mental image immediately comes to find. But imagine how difficult it would be to imagine what she looked like if I could only use words to describe her. That’s the power of visual literacy.
Lynell Burmark of the Thornburg Center shared some great insights on research that has been conducted about the impact of images. For example, there are 1,000,000 fibers from each eye to the brain, but only 30,000 fibers from the ear. She likened it to 1,000,000 highway lanes compared to only 30,000 lanes. Yet, it is a common practice to rely more on “hearing” than “seeing” when we teach. We process images 60,000 times faster than we process words. What could happen if we display a picture on the screen and use it to open a class session with discussion?
I also found it interesting that, according to one estimate, there are approximately 30,000 PowerPoint presentations shown daily. However, if most of those presentations are dominated by text and the text is read by the presenter, studies show that retention decreases (we tend to mentally turn off either the slide or the speaker).
The greatest challenge for me personally, based on additional research conducted by Richard Mayer, is to develop PowerPoint slides with full-size pictures. Then, I should use either words displayed after the initial picture is already seen or a voice-over embedded after the initial display. The research indicates an 89% likelihood that the content in the slide will be retained aand applied using this strategy.
One last thought before lunch – there are now projectors that can simultaneously display two different pictures. Set up two screens and let them slides work together. The advantage here is that a student can still linger on the previous slide if they need more time to process a thought. I know the costs of projectors are high, but that certainly makes sense.