Nancy Curran

MEDT 7490
Reflection of Learning

It is important that teachers work to help students learn to become visually literate. In a

world where students are constantly being bombarded with images, it is important that they

understand how to interpret those images in order to glean any type of meaning from it. Over the

course of this class I feel that I learned a variety of instructional strategies that will help me to

better my students understanding of the media that they are constantly being surrounded by. I

appreciated the opportunity to learn about new types of strategies to use with students to help

them learn about media and how it can impact their own lives. Because I teach science I have

always used images and media in my classroom to help students to understand difficult material

and abstract concepts, but this course taught me a variety of new strategies that I have already

begun to implement in my classroom.

In this class I feel that I have learned how to pay closer attention to the ways that I use

multimedia in my classroom. I have learned that sometimes less is more and that its important to

be able to edit the types of information that the students are seeing. This class taught me the

importance of the Cognitive Load Theory and that its important to introduce students to a

concept multiple times, but that its also important to design lessons so that they are not

overloaded by the amount of information that they are being presented with. This has actually

caused me to edit a few of my own lectures to try to not overload students on particular concepts

all at one time. By breaking things down a little more I am allowing students to focus on content

at a deeper level, giving them a greater understanding of the content. This has meant that I have
tried to add more images that help students to understand the concept beyond simply seeing or

hearing words during a PowerPoint lecture.

I have also enjoyed the opportunity during this class to learn more about how to design

lessons for my students that require them to create visual media. I think this is an important skill

so that they learn to edit images and create them for themselves. I will be putting this to use soon

with my students as they will be required to design a website with an infographic along with a

video to help convey information about a particular disease outbreak. I am looking forward to

seeing what the students will come up with as they try to convey difficult concepts in an

interesting way. I hope to be able to apply the lessons learned in this class to future assignments

for my students to help enrich their science experience.

I truly enjoyed this class because it gave me a chance to be creative on a regular basis. I

learned a lot of new techniques for creating things like comics and editing images, etc. I most

enjoyed the assignment which required us to research the elements of design and apply them to

taking photographs. I enjoyed taking the photos and getting out from behind my computer to

complete the assignment. It was so much more effective compared to writing a paper or

designing a poster because it required me to think about everything from lighting and color to

help make the best image. I think it would be great to do something like this with my students in

the form of a scavenger hunt in the future to help them to get up and moving to show me that

they understand a particular topic. I think that a lot of my students would appreciate the

opportunity to complete such an assignment.

Of course this class has been challenging at the same time. I was most challenged when

working with another teacher to help to redesign their lessons in order to incorporate more

media. This posed a challenge because I had to learn about a new type of content standard and
think about ways to apply visual and media literacy to teach the content. I felt like I was starting

from scratch on a great deal of it because I had no prior assignments to work from or build upon.

However, at the end of the day, it was an enriching experience. I enjoyed seeing how things are

done in other classes, while also thinking about new ways to have students demonstrate their

knowledge. I hope to someday become a technology leader in my school and this assignment

gave me experience in helping others to incorporate technology and visual media into the

classroom to help their students to understand the content on a deeper level.

Related to the objectives of this course, I feel that I demonstrated each of them through

the projects during the semester. I was able to develop an awareness of the roles and applications

of visual and media literacy to enhance learning by creating projects that hopefully my students

will enjoy completing in the future. I now better understand the role of images and media in

helping my students to learn content by emphasizing what is important. I have been able to

develop competencies in operating equipment to create media by using a variety of programs

while creating comics, infographics, and PowerPoints. I designed and produced digital education

materials for my students that will be able to use for years to come. I also am now equipped with

the knowledge about how to revise my prior materials to better suit the needs of my students.

This semester has required me to select and utilize various digital tools and resources to be able

to implement them with my students. I have learned about new types of technology that I will be

able to use with my students in the future. Finally, I had the opportunity to discuss and model fair

use and copyright laws so that I can strive to be more aware in the future of how I use materials

in my classes so that I can be a better role model for my students.

Overall, this course taught me the importance of using visual media in my classroom. I

have learned a variety of new strategies to use with my students in the hopes that they will
someday be more able to interpret media for themselves. I enjoyed the fact that this class was so

hands on and provided me with direct strategies to use immediately, compared to only focusing

on conceptual frameworks and research. While these things are important to understanding

media, its great to have had the opportunity to take it further and think about how that research

would then apply to my students and their learning.