Reflection Visual and Media Literacy 1
Reflection Visual Media
Christy B. Ballew
University of West Georgia
Reflection Visual and Media Literacy 2
I feel that I’ve learned quite a lot this semester. Copyright issues, creating meaning with
visuals, and storyboard sequencing were fairly new ideas to me. I have always enjoyed the visual
ideals in the past – I like taking pictures, I had art classes in college, and graphic design is super
appealing – and taking this class really helped to solidify my enjoyment of these topics. This
class also brought about a desire to utilize more of the skills taught in my own classes this next
year.
There are two main issues that I discovered regarding visual and media literacy. The first
is that of copyright. As a teacher, when I am trying to create a presentation or poster for my
class, the thought of infringing on copyright was never really something that I thought about.
Perhaps because I wasn’t using it for monetary gain I didn’t think it was a problem. Now, I will
be more aware of the rights of creators of the visuals and media that I want to use in my classes.
Now that I have this knowledge, I can’t ignore it.
The other issue that I discovered was in regard to instructional design methods. It has
been a very long time since I have really created a lesson based on a specific design model, and
while learning about new models was extremely interesting, I don’t feel that following a specific
design model for every single lesson is feasible. I would say the instructional design model most
naturally used is backwards design. It tends to be the easiest to utilize in our environment.
I hope to apply many ideals from this class into my curriculum this year. Dual-coding
was an especially easy, yet effective method I can now use to reach my students and help them
better understand the material. I had never created an infographic before this class, and now I
feel they are extremely helpful to either have hanging in my room, or to have the students create
themselves. I also feel that the module on redesigning materials based on new knowledge was
extremely transferrable to the classroom. It really makes it easy to see how uninteresting and
Reflection Visual and Media Literacy 3
unattractive some of my current presentations are. I will be looking back at my lessons and
redesigning this year for sure!
I feel that from the beginning of class to the end, my perspective on using more visuals in
the classroom has become more positive. I also feel that I have more tools in my toolbox to work
with. I needed my horizons to be expanded, and this class has done that. Class also opened my
eyes to how easy it can be to implement these strategies. As teachers, we want to be able to reach
our students, but sometimes we write strategies off as being too time consuming or not worth the
work. I no longer feel that way, and I am eager to share these new ideas with my colleagues.
The most challenging issue of this course was time management. It has been awhile since
I have been in college, and I am having to readjust to working ahead and on schedule. I did well
for the majority of the time, but there were few times that I fell a bit short. I really did not find
issue with any of the material or lessons. To the contrary, I enjoyed every topic we learned about.
I have always been interested in visuals, but now that I’m in math, those ideas had fled from my
mind. Now I know I can have the best of both worlds.
I honestly enjoyed everything about this course. However, if I have to pick, I would say I
especially learning about dual coding and the section on comics, cartoons, graphic novels,
infographics, and posters. I had never really considered using any of these elements in my
classroom. I think I have gotten so caught up in the rat race of the math standards that I forget
about new strategies and methods. These particular strategies will help me to bridge that gap and
make class more interesting.
The only idea I have to make class better would be implementing more live class
sessions. These would take the place of one discussion a week and give students the ability to
truly interact and respond to one another. I know that would bring up the issues of how to grade
Reflection Visual and Media Literacy 4
everyone and fitting into everyone’s schedule, but I do think it would be a nice addition. Other
than that, I did not feel that anything needed changing. It was nice having the two face-to-face
meetings, as it makes one feel more connected to their professor and classmates. Overall, I
thoroughly enjoyed this class and would not hesitate to take another class from you again!
