Visual Literacy

After reviewing the material on visual literacy, I learned that there was a lot more to being literate than what I first understood.  When it comes to being "literate", I found that Doug Belshaw had a great point.

"Literacy is a characteristic acquired by individuals in varying degrees from just above none to an indeterminate upper level. Some individuals are more or less literate than others but it is really not possible to speak of illiterate and literate persons as two distinct categories." - Doug Belshaw

 What he meant by this, is that everyone sees things in there own way.  It may be because of their background, culture, or generation, but when they see something, they understand it using past elements and aspects to comprehend what they are actually looking at.  I can relate to this in my life.  My twin sister and I have grown up using computers and can navigate through them fairly easily to accomplish what we are trying to do.  My parents on the other hand were always amazed at our comprehension of computers, because they had no idea how to use them.  My dad especially... He always claimed he couldn't even turn one on if he wanted, but I am sure it is more stubbornness than truth.  But when it comes to diagnosing a problem with a motor, tearing it apart and putting it back together so that it works, I would have no idea about any of that.  I am not mechanically inclined one bit.  However, my dad is and in fact, he is very good at it.  Which makes the point, just because one person doesn't understand something, does not mean that they are not literate... Because they are probably very good at understanding something else.

Belshaw taught me how messages can be presented in a very effective way through the use of his eight essential elements of digital literacies.  With a mix of elements like cognitive, constructive, connections, civic, critical, creative, confident and cultural, the viewer of the message will be able to better comprehend what you are trying to say.  I could see some of these elements being used in the Three Little Pigs video and that is why I found that video to be effective.  It presented a message, without actually saying the message.  That message was that through news and social media outlets, many points of views and "spinoffs" are created from when the original story first broke of what really happened to "the three little pigs".  All those point of views and spinoffs lead to more serious issues that changed the world, socially.

This was the first visual image that I decided to create.  I created it with the "Gimp" photo editing software program. I used Gimp, because I was very familiar with Adobe Photoshop in the past, but I currently do not have that program on my computer, so I used Gimp, because that program is very similar to Adobe Photoshop and it is free.  For my image, I decided to use an image of one of my favorite big mountain snowboarders, Xavier De La Rue, dropping in on a very gnarly line that I would even be scared to do in my dreams.  I used the word committed, because in order to ride down a slope at a pitch like this, you have no choice but to be exactly that, committed.