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SID06790 Nick Sidoryn Marden Senior College

Visualising the Visual Abstract This research project looks at the computer as a tool that allows a user to access and work

with various forms of media, especially images. This is especially important, as the visual

is now a central part of our culture. It is argued that an emphasis on the visual presents

opportunities to re-evaluate firstly, how PowerPoint can be used in the classroom, and

secondly, how the visual essay can be renewed and made a more prominent part of our

teaching practice.

Introduction

The visual dominates so many areas of life now. Our view of the world is mediated

through TV, and increasingly the Internet as it in turn becomes a more visual and

interactive medium. Most forms of communication are highly visual. Is there a day that

passes when we don’t use the power of simple icons to carry out complex instructions,

whether on our personal computer or the local ATM? And this type of interaction applies

even more so to our students who are adept with their computer games and the imaging

capabilities of their mobile phones. But having acknowledged the wealth of visual

experience in our culture does not necessarily translate into the ability to analyse and

manage that experience. So what kind of educational program could we devise that might

help our students navigate more successfully this enticing and alluring visual world?

Firstly, it is important to appreciate that there are different notions of the “visual.” A way

of demonstrating this is to look at three contemporary attempts to capture essential

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qualities of our visual world. One notion can be found in the writings of the art historian,

Gombich. He describes an ordinary day in the following terms:

We are living in a visual age. We are bombarded by pictures from

morning to night. Opening our newspaper at breakfast we see photographs

of men and women in the news, and raising our eyes from the paper, we

encounter the picture on the cereal package. The mail arrives and one

envelope after another discloses glossy folders with pictures of alluring

landscapes and sunbathing girls to entice us to take a holiday

cruise…Leaving our house, we pass billboards along the road that try to

catch our eye and play on our desire to smoke, drink or eat. At work it is

more than likely that we have to deal with some kind of pictorial

information: photographs, sketches, catalogues, blueprints, maps or at

least graphs. Relaxing in the evening, we sit in front of the television set,

the new window on the world, and watch moving images of pleasure and

horrors flit by. Even the images created in times gone by or in distant

lands are more easily accessible to us than they ever were to the public for

which they were created. Picture books, picture postcards and colour

slides accumulate in our homes as souvenirs of travel, as do the private

mementos of our family snapshots (Gombrich, 1996, p. 41).

In this account, the visual world is one of images, which “entice”, “tempt us” and “play

with our desires.” At work we have to “deal with” a variety of pictorial information,

while at home we relax by watching images on TV which “flit by.” It is a description of a

world where images cannot be avoided. They demand attention and we seem helplessly

passive before them. Gombrich goes on to argue that unlike language, which can inform

because of its ability to conceptualise the world, the power of images lies in its ability to

arouse emotions, “the visual image is supreme in its capacity for arousal” (Gombrich,

1996, p. 41).

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A recent attempt to update Gombrich’s description of a typical day provides a second

notion of the visual:

Putting the bread in the toaster we notice its quaint retro styling. After

eating we visit the bathroom, which is hidden in a part of the house that is

away from public view. Driving to work in our 4WD car whose bulk

symbolizes our status and whose styling pays homage to the frontier

ideologies of our country we read the play of traffic in the road in order to

ensure a safe passage. We arrive at the security gate of our office building

and pass by the panopticon-like security cameras. As we walk in from the

car park we notice how the design of the office building gives off an

impression of power and wealth…Entering our office we water the plants

which give it a homely feel and pin up some new postcards (Emmison and

Smith, 2000, pp viii-ix)

It would be easy to dismiss all these visual items as a “mindless fascination” with the

trivial. However, Emmison and Smith’s description seeks to make us see the visual in

new ways. The visual as they understand it is much more than photographic images.

Their account presents a series of visual spaces that in turn contain visual items. Some of

these spaces are personal ones and they reflect our own values and ideas of design as well

as the influence of certain cultural trends, such as, the idea of the “frontier”. Others are

public spaces and these in turn are invested with a variety of attitudes that reflect ideas of

power, how people should move through these spaces, how individuals and groups can be

influenced and directed to see within these spaces and finally, how they in turn are seen

by “the panopticon-like security cameras.”

Emmison and Smith’s proposals are valuable for highlighting that what constitutes the

visual needs to be thought of in broad terms. Unlike the Gombrich extract where

external images seem to actively impress their meaning on a passive receiver; their

description acknowledges the visualising capacity of the subject. Here we have

individuals who as they respond to style and design are making visual judgements.

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These judgements range over recognition regarding how issues of power and status are

built into our visual world, an awareness of the symbolic qualities of objects and how

our mood and feelings are influenced by the visuals that surround us. The human eye as

it makes these visual judgements is an “intelligent eye” actively constructing meaning.

Gombrich then, presents our visual experiences as a central and pervasive part of

everyday life, while Emmison and Smith suggest that cultural knowledge is a key

element in shaping what we see and how we see. Even a toaster can be seen as an

aesthetic object with a history of design if you have the “eyes” to see it as such. Their

account also emphasizes our own practices of visualization, that is, how we ourselves

engage with the visual. This focus in turn has raised concerns about how these practices

can best be described and analysed:

Spectatorship (the look, the gaze, the glance, the practices of observation,

surveillance, and visual pleasure) may be as deep a problem as various

forms of reading (decipherment, decoding, interpretation, etc) and that

‘visual experience’ or ‘visual literacy’ might not be fully explicable in the

model of textuality (Mitchell, 1994, as cited in Mirzoeff, 1999, p. 7).

A third notion of the visual is Mirzoeff’s view that what we experience on a screen

through technology is a qualitatively different form of engagement with the visual. In this

view we now spend a considerable amount of time interacting with various screens,

whether they are video surveillance cameras, camcorders, webcams, mobile phones,

television or the computer. This has led him to state, “Modern life takes place onscreen.”

(Mirzoeff, 1999, p.1) Life is increasingly experienced on the screen and these

representations show, interpret, and point us to particular aspects of life. Mirzoeff

concludes that

In this swirl of imagery, seeing is much more than believing. It is not

just part of everyday life, it is everyday life.” (Mirzoeff, 1999, p.1)

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His description gives the impression that our interactions with the screen are ones where

we give ourselves up to the whirl of giddy sensations which are random and disconnected

but ultimately enticing. It is this quality of life that is “increasingly lived” and the visual

stimulation brought about by the various technologies of visual production satisfy and

draws us in. But at the same time we aren’t able to recognize within this imagery any

discernible pattern or meaning. Consequently, we don’t arrive at belief or the truth.

A more extreme version of this association of the visual with pleasure is Frederic

Jameson’s claim that

The visual is essentially pornographic, which is to say it has its end in rapt,

mindless fascination… (Jameson, 1990, as cited in Mirzoeff, 1999, p. 10)

Where Gombrich saw the visual as intruding into our world because of its emotional

power, Jameson sees our situation as one where we actively seek the visual because of

the pleasures that they afford us. By characterizing the visual as “essentially

pornographic” he suggests that their seductive power lures us into a state where we

abandon thinking and give ourselves over to the pleasure, intensity, excitement and

rapture afforded by the visual This attitude reflects a widespread suspicion of the visual,

and assumes that a culture dominated by the visual must be an inferior one. One reason

for this hostility is that the visual has been closely identified with popular culture.

Reading and writing are disciplines that need to be mastered, whereas the visual is there

to provide instant and mindless enjoyment. From this viewpoint, education is a journey

where, in time, the “simple” pleasures of the visual, will eventually give way to the more

“complex” pleasures of the written word. Furthermore, in western culture, writing has

tended to be associated with reason and so the textual has been well suited to providing a

written restraint to the undisciplined pleasures of the visual.

Technology Education and the Visual

All these views suggest the centrality of visuality in modern life. Whether we are dealing

with this off screen or on screen, “human experience is now more visual and visualized

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than ever before,” (Mirzoeff, 1999, p. 1) If this is the case, then our teaching programs

should provide our students with opportunities to look at how society, both in the present

and the past, has attempted to visualise experience, as well as providing opportunities for

them to do so.

The second point is that even if Mirzoeff’s claim that we now interact predominantly

with visual material on screen is exaggerated, it is nevertheless the case that more and

more time is being spent looking and interacting with the computer screen. But what

form should these interactions take in an educational setting? Developments within

digital technology have certainly presented educators with new opportunities to engage

students with their visual world. Technology has given users an unprecedented freedom

and flexibility in a whole range of information and communication practices. From this

perspective, the digital computer can be seen as a powerful tool for the storage and

manipulation of digital data. Students can access and use a diverse range of media.

Sounds, texts, image both moving and still, all become media that can be combined in

different ways to communicate.

However, how should all this unprecedented access to various types of media be

embedded into an educational program? Should we, like Jameson, be wary of the siren

call of the visual, which in his view, is at odds with a rational and deep approach to

learning? This is of course at the heart of Gombrich’s argument that images work

primarily at the emotional level. Furthermore, isn’t this is the very basis of the success of

the MTV style of presentation which seeks to bypass the rational:

Our core audience is the television babies who grew up on TV and

rock & roll. The strongest appeal you can make is emotionally. If

you get their emotions going, [make them] forget their logic,

you’ve got ‘em. (Cited in Poynor, 2001, p.51)

Visuality is the mechanism by which we engage with the world around us. In every act of

looking we are gathering and arranging sensations, but even at this level, looking never

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occurs without knowledge, even if it is only “tacit knowledge.” (Schirato, 2004, p. 41)

This is knowledge which occurs in an automatic manner. Another level of visuality

occurs when we need to engage with our world in a more direct way. It is a level of

attention where we move beyond taking in the bare minimum and function at a level of

alertness where knowledge shapes the visual input in more direct ways. However, the

highest stage of attention is where we consciously decide what to look at and see. The

visual experience here involves a mixture of seeing and interpretation. The descriptions

provided by Gombrich, Emmison and Smith, and Mitzoeff, all highlight this stage. The

power of their observations lies in their conscious attempts not to automatically respond

to their visual world but to look at it in a deliberate way. What they see is influenced by

their social and cultural frameworks, but they are also able to draw upon it to produce a

rich visual description. Their accounts in turn make us see the visual in new and different

ways.

This is what John Berger was challenging his readers to do in his book Ways of Seeing.

He wanted them to rethink the ways in which they viewed the many images that made up

their world. Every image embodies a way of seeing, but it is the way the viewer responds

to the image that is central to Berger. For him there is not one way of seeing, but there are

approaches that are more rich and rewarding. Each individual needs to create the

circumstances whereby looking is transformed into seeing. This involves a process where

our encounters with the visual become moments of intense, personal reflection.

The aim of the Project

For the purpose of my Project, I decided to test out these ideas by looking at how students

used visual material in two types of activities. The first involved using PowerPoint as a

predominantly visual medium. Here the screen would be deliberately arranged by a

specific piece of software. The second task involved using the visual essay as a form of

communication. Here the way in which visual and written material were combined was

the point of interest.

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The decision was made to restrict the visual sources to still images. The reason for this

was to see whether Jameson’s concerns could be countered by an approach which

“slowed down” the process so that our rational faculties were engaged and not bypassed.

Here the following comment by Camille Paglia was pertinent:

The visual environment for the young, in short, has become confused,

fragmented, and unstable. Students now understand moving but not still

images. The long, dreamy, contemplative takes of classic Hollywood

studio movies or postwar European art films are long gone. Today’s rapid-

fire editing descends from Jean-Luc Godard, with his hand-held camera,

and more directly from Godard’s Anglo-American acolyte, Richard

Lester, whose two Beatles movies have heavily influenced commercials,

music videos, and independent films. Education must slow the images

down, to provide a clear space for the eye (Paglia, 2004 p. 2).

By providing a “clear space for the eye”, it was hoped that students would operate at a

level of attention where they reflected on their visual resources and deliberately shaped

and arranged them to meet their purposes. How they “saw” would influence what they

did.

Data Collection

My Project involved forty Year 12 students at Marden Senior College in South Australia.

Marden is an adult re-entry college and the age of this student group ranged from 18 year

olds to those in their 40’s. The main activity involved the students communicating

through a visual/photographic essay. They also reflected on the process of creating their

essay on an audiotape, which was passed up, with their essay. The PowerPoint activity

involved a small group of eight, Year 11 adult students.

Research Methodology

The research methodology adopted for this project was the case study. The reasons for

taking such an approach are cogently argued by Richard Andrews in an article titled

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Where Next in Research on ICT and Literacies, where he evaluates experimental research

studies conducted since 1990. On the basis of a systematic review of the existing

literature on the impact of ICT on literacy, he concluded that the quality of this research

was generally poor. This was not entirely surprising as the methodologies that had been

employed in the past, were too often, outdated by both the pace of technological change

and the concepts employed. Key terms like literacy, which once enjoyed widespread

agreement, now have to be redefined in far broader terms in order to better reflect the

new circumstances within which literacy operates. (Lankshear and Snyder, 2000, xvii-

xviii) All these circumstances have resulted in a situation where research, which aimed to

establish broad generalizations, finds its results out of date almost as soon as they are

published. He concludes therefore, that in the present context of rapid change and one in

which the concepts employed are too often outmoded, that the best methodology is the

case study.

The strength of the case study does not lie in its ability to make broad generalizations, but

rather in an approach where “research is in the service of action.” (Andrews, 2004, p.65).

Looking closely at specific examples can prove to be highly illuminating,

because they help us to clarify ideas, test our hunches, refine our

notions of what is possible and what isn’t. They don’t ‘add up to

much’ but they don’t claim to. It’s the pre-paradigm stage of inquiry,

and it’s likely never to get beyond the pre-paradigm stage because

research is being left behind practice, technological development,

shifting definitions of literacy and shifting social patterning.

(Andrews, 2004, p. 61)

Consequently, the aim of my research project was to describe and analyse through

selected case studies, the way some students used technology to produce texts that

combined the visual and textual. The goal was not so much to examine the performance of

the groups as a whole but to select individual examples for comment. This approach

allowed me to highlight how students deal with visual material. By looking at examples of

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the way they selected, used and transformed their resources, it served to highlight the

kinds of design decisions that students needed to make. The work selected for comment is

also presented to highlight possibilities and to emphasise the complex nature of their

work. Hopefully, they provide useful insights for teachers into “what is possible and what

isn’t.”

PowerPoint as a visual medium

A group of Year 11 students were given the task of exploring the idea of absurdity in an

oral presentation where PowerPoint would serve to support their spoken comments. Any

slides that were presented were to be primarily visual rather than textual. The aim of this

activity was to see whether students could visually represent their thinking and whether

the visuals could add complexity to their arguments. PowerPoint was an appropriate

software to test these ideas because it is the most widely used visual presentation format

in schools, and there is a view that PowerPoint encourages superficial thinking, especially

in its use of text.

One of the foremost critics of PowerPoint is Edward R. Tufte, professor of information

design at Yale University. He makes three major criticisms. Firstly, PowerPoint

trivializes thinking. Truth is complex and often cannot be reduced to short phrases and

the tiny fragments of bullet points. What is often left out of such over simplified bullet-

lists is the narrative that lies between the points. “My research indicates that for maybe 10

or 20 percent of users, PowerPoint improves the presentation, because the users are so

disorganized or inept it forces them to have points. But for the other 80 per cent there’s

some significant degree of intellectual corruption. For statistical data, the damage

approaches dementia.” (Nadel, 2003 p.1) Secondly, it forces a very sequential type of

display where slide follows slide and makes no allowance for free associations and

creative thinking. Thirdly, there is a blunting of information where it is difficult to

appreciate the significance and importance of particular points. Also, the connections

between the different points of information are not always obvious. Tufte concludes that

the cognitive style of PowerPoint is one that encourages imprecise and superficial

thinking.

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In Does PowerPoint make you stupid? Tad Simons examines Tufte’s assertions and while

agreeing with many of his points introduces some important qualifications. He argues

that the way PowerPoint is used reflects our bullet-point culture, which values “do it

fast”, “get to the point” and “only provide information in small doses.” The display of

thought, subtlety, context, and depth are not qualities much emphasized in our culture.

Also, he sees PowerPoint as a visual medium rather than a textual one and quotes with

approval the view of Don Norman that, “Text is the last thing people should put on a

PowerPoint slide. In fact, I would argue that supporting visuals – charts, diagrams,

illustrations, photos and video – are the only things that should appear on a slide.”

(Simons, 2004, p.3) This emphasis on PowerPoint as a visual medium is a valuable point

and means that the focus should not be on the “how” of the application but on the design

qualities of the presentation. This in turn involves appreciating when and why to use its

various features.

The following three slides from a student’s PowerPoint presentation demonstrates one

such attempt to grapple with these points:

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Slide 1 sets up the absurdity of a situation where various women’s magazines make it

seem that it’s almost a crime to be anything other than a waif, and that to gain even a

small amount of weight is a disaster, while at the same time, including articles that

frequently expose the dangers of eating disorders.

On this slide we can see an attempt to treat text visually. As an opening slide it serves to

orient its audience to the issue under discussion. Absurdity is already suggested by the

irregular and disjointed arrangement of lines, while the size of “are absurd” and “to their

readers” suggests that the relationship between these two elements is going to be a

prominent part of the presentation. The clean and simple lines of the font add to the clear

statement of intent.

Computer technology like PowerPoint that allowed the user to employ words, images,

sound and animation, in varying combinations was initially seen as groundbreaking and

novel. Now, there is a better understanding that multimodal representations have been a

characteristic of many forms of expressions in the past. Writing can be appreciated for its

visual component, a feature that past discussion had rarely emphasised. And if

technological developments have created a new relationship between the visual and the

textual with the textual no longer necessarily in the dominant position, then some would

argue that this is all for the better, as now the textual will be appreciated for its visual

qualities. In the past, the written form was expected to be transparent and the reader was

not meant to be aware of the letters on the page.

…the real winner of the new digital writing devices is not our poor and

silly alphabet, but everything that this alphabet has tried to ignore and to

despise for such a long time…in short all the expressive richness the

phonetic model of our writing did not care about. Writing has become

once again, thanks to the small illuminated screen, what it was originally:

the reading of images (Christin, cited in Baetens, 2003, p. 196).

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The rediscovery of the visual potential of writing allows what has been invisible to

become visible again. It may also encourage students to become attentive to the

expressive possibilities of typography and by extension to become more aware of the

typography that surrounds them. It is a further demonstration of how technological

changes can help us to see with new eyes.

Slide 1 then, shows in a very simple way, a use of text that appreciates that the shapes of

letters and their arrangement can have an expressive function. It is an attempt to

communicate by utilizing the visual possibilities of text. The subsequent slides, two of

which are shown below, seek to demonstrate the “mixed messages” of magazines today.

Slide 2, the key slide in the presentation, provides an overview of the argument. Rather

than simplifying the issue what we see is a visually dense display of information.

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The size and placement of text act like bullet points, but in this case as visual gun shots,

that convey an almost claustrophobic sense of crisis. The cut out notes are further

elaborated in a further thirteen slides. This approach, rather than fragmenting the

argument, serves to reinforce the point that each is making. Here we have an argument

that works by repetition where the variety and scope of the examples serve to convince.

The following slide, Slide 3, is an example of how the other thirteen slides were

presented:

Here the arguments work on the basis of contrast and we can see this is built into the

visual design of the page. The contrast between the advertising text and the student’s, sets

up the point of the argument and provides the context for the student to elaborate further.

The visual design reinforces the persuasive intentions of the student. The two outer black

blocks serve to frame the middle where the colour gives urgency and energy to the

contrasting elements. The white block, which contains the student’s message, “This

advertisement attempts to promote realistic bodies, while using a waif thin model.” is

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almost overwhelmed by the advertisement and gives impetus to the importance of what

the student has to say. That is, the design highlights the power of the advertising message

and that it can overwhelm unless countered in some way. In this case, the student’s verbal

supporting comments are the important additional element that gives extra prominence to

his written statement.

I believe that by emphasizing PowerPoint as a visual medium, some of the limitations

identified by Tufte can be overcome. In making the focus on the when and why of a

presentation, the student is positioned to pay attention, not so much to the technical

features of the program, but rather to the design that matches his argument. In books such

as Envisioning Information (1990) Tufte provides valuable advice about how visual

displays can help thinking. His aim is to provide strategies for “seeing and showing.”

This seeing is not about “Aren’t these pictures of molecules beautiful?”

Rather, the point is to recognize the tightness between seeing and thinking

on an intellectual level not just a metaphorical level. That tightness is

expressed in the very physiology of the eye: the retina is made from brain

cells; the brain begins at the back of the eye. Seeing turns into thinking

right there…[And this involves] turning thinking principles into seeing

principles. So, if the thinking task is to understand causality, the task calls

for a design principle: “Show causality” (Zachry and Thralls, 2004, p.5).

In the student’s case we do have an example of “seeing [turning] into thinking”. The task

required a discussion of absurdity and the PowerPoint presentation has been designed to

“Show absurdity.” The style of argument employed uses contrast and repetition, and this

has been effectively presented. However, the placement of text in Slide 3 is an indication

that visuals alone are unable to sustain the argument. Examples are there to be elaborated

and this is the task of the student through their oral comments. What we have is a form of

communication that takes advantage of the medium of the screen to present an argument

through the interplay of voice and images. The visuals serve to ground the presentation in

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an immediacy which shows the general outline and tone of argument, but make demands

on the student to explain. A more textual approach would have short circuited this.

The Visual Essay

The discussion concerning PowerPoint has raised the possibility that thinking about

technology in terms of a specific context of use can change the way we use that

technology. If PowerPoint is framed primarily as a visual presentation medium, then the

user is encouraged to try to represent their thinking visually. The visual essay, in its turn,

provides a different context where technology can serve as a tool with which students can

think and represent the world in more complex ways.

The photographic/visual essay is a genre that is especially associated with Life magazine.

Henry Luce, the founder of Life believed that this form of visual communication would

allow the reader “to see and take pleasure in seeing, to see and be amazed, to see and be

instructed…” (Cited in Baetens, 2003, p. 185). There is a sense of wonder in this

description about the possibilities of linking photographs with text. And students today

can also experience this wondrous feeling as they access diverse visual material on

almost any topic. However, exposing students to this form of text can also highlight

strong continuities with past communication practices. The visual essay may not have

been described as a multimodal text in the past, but in utilizing images and texts, that is

just what it is. Exploring this communication practice allows students to see that current

new media has strong affinities with the past. Technology like the Internet allows

students to access rich media which they can use to shape their responses. However,

technology never operates in a vacuum and by applying it within an existing cultural

form, like the visual essay, new media can often be better appreciated as a reworking of

long standing cultural trends.

The New Snapshot

But why is it important that our students become adept at creating multimodal texts and

understand the central role of images within them? One reason is that students need to be

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aware of the emotional power of images. Jameson and Gombrich have both alluded to

this, as does Ann Barry who draws on recent brain research which she concludes

contradicts earlier thought and reveals how sensory signals from the eye

travel first to the thalamus and then, in a kind of short circuit, to the

amygdala before a second signal is sent to the neocortex. The implication of

this is that we begin to respond emotionally to situations before we can think

them through. The ramifications of this fact are significant, suggesting that

we are not the fully rational beings we might like to think we are.

(Barry,1997, p.18)

It takes a deliberate conscious effort to counteract the power of an emotionally charged

image, and I have argued that using still images enables immediate acceptance to be

replaced with thoughtful observation.

Producing visual essays is also a way of furthering this distancing process as students

seek to visually represent their thinking. This point is highlighted in the following

example which concerns how anti-abortionists have used graphic medical images as a

tool of persuasion. The student’s visual essay examined how “image use” as pioneered

by Robert Dodenhoff, a strong anti-abortionist, is presented on his website

AbortionTV(.com). Disturbing medical images are shown on the “Abortion Pictures”

section of the website. The student reflected that the use of such medical images “is as

real as it gets, (but) it’s also as emotional as it gets.” It draws attention to the power of

images to persuade through working on our emotions. The aim of this website is that

others will follow the path of one girl who on finding herself pregnant visited the

website, and “felt physically sick at the truth. Without hesitation, she chose adoption.”

Tomorrow is a chance, not a promise

Technology has provided us with access to images on a scale never seen before and we

need to recognise the emotional power residing in them. At the same time we need to use

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this energy to move from feeling to thought: “I see, I feel, hence I notice, I observe, and I

think.” (Barthes, as cited in Lister, 1995, p.39)

An example of how this can be achieved can be seen in the visual essay: Tomorrow is a

chance, not a promise. This is a powerful reflection on the memory of the Columbine

Massacre and the events of September 11, 2001. As a fourteen year old girl at the time,

this student witnessed those events in repeated replays on TV. She also kept a personal

journal in which she recorded her reactions. Four years later, she has looked back on

those events and thought about the way information in the media impacts on youth: “I

remember the images of ‘ground zero’ and the reality of the situation on television. Those

images were persistently replayed, as we became curiously drawn to the situation’s

uncertainty…These tragedies provided me with fleeting, however memorable, reminder

of what is important in my life.”

The way the student has structured her visual essay gives us a sense of how images and

text can complement each other, and that a written piece alone, perhaps, would not have

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been able to communicate quite as powerfully. Images are in the background, some

distinct, others vague and ambiguous. The Columbine images stand out with the

time/date signatures of the security camera footages and they serve to anchor the account

to a precise time. As shape and colour, the page is a series of blocks of colour, white, blue

and purple. The paragraphs are also visual blocks that dominate the page. “I used the

images to help justify my feelings about the topic although I purposely made them

indistinct in order to have the writing more prominent.” The overall impact of this visual

arrangement is to suggest an almost dreamlike pool of memories out of which specific

memories have taken shape. This is how she now sees and remembers those events.

The visuality that dominates this student’s response is also reflected in the writing that

takes on a very pictorial quality:

At approximately ten past twelve on the afternoon of April the 20th,

1999, students at Columbine High School were making their way

anxiously to the school’s indoor cafeteria for their lunch break.

Meanwhile, students Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold entered the

room…As the two boys walked calmly through the school building,

they fired their weapons un-relentlessly. Within thirty minutes, Eric and

Dylan had injured nineteen students, killed one teacher and a further

thirteen students.

Interspersed between such descriptive narrative, are reflective comments that seek to

capture a fourteen year old’s viewpoint, “I personally reflected on these events in a very

emotional way. I tried desperately to understand how people such as Dyland Klebold and

Eric Harris and terrorists could harbour this much hatred and decide to inflict this much

pain on other individuals.” Also, there are her present day comments, where she has

arrived at some measure of understanding: “Although acts such as murder and terrorism

are still very real possibilities within our society, we cannot allow these events to stop us

from continuing our lives…we must continue to uphold the law, maintain a multicultural

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image, and continue to educate our population to create understanding. “Tomorrow is a

chance, not a promise.”’

A Healthy Dose of Horror

Another example of how technology can make the visual essay a powerful form of

expression in the classroom, involved a student reflecting on his experience of creating a

visual essay. In this case still images were modified in iMovie using the Ken Burns effect.

This allows an image to be singled out for further emphasis. Here, the images serve to

support the varied reflections of a student who clearly enjoyed working with images. His

work demonstrates the potential of both the visual essay and his reflective movie to

communicate the complexity of thought underlying this activity.

The range and detail of this student’s comments gives a sense of the engagement that

comes from using images and how this can encourage a reflective frame of mind.

I was surprised that when writing the essay I explored more ideas than

I initially had in mind. At first I just wanted to convey that horror films

were mostly ‘tongue in cheek’, and harmless. As I began to delve more

deeply, I awakened to the idea that real life is so much scarier!

Another important reflective comment made by this student answers the criticism that is

often made that in using images from sources like the Internet, the student is engaged in

an overly simple and undemanding task. Putting aside that the heart of the task is the

melding of image and text, there is an ethical issue of the purpose to which these images

are used. I consider the following comment as showing an ethical concern that doesn’t

seem to have concerned Robert Dodenhoff’s selection of images for his website.

My writing was built around the images that I had in mind (which I

intended to use), so the words were there to reinforce or capture

feelings that I had for those images. For example, in constructing the

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second page, I wanted to convey a cold terrifying reality. When I

originally collected images of reality, I felt such discomfort that I

didn’t even want to include them in my essay. Of course I needed

them, as part of my argument. Instead I decided to understate them

with no colour and a bland layout. It might seem a little silly, but I felt

that parading them wasn’t the right thing to do.

Conclusion

There are good reasons why students should be encouraged to introduce visual material

into their writing. Jay Baetans provides four reasons. The first is that of readability where

visual images make it easier for the eye to manage the text blocks. Secondly, images

convey information in an economical way. Thirdly, images convey modernity in that

today we expect the visual to play an important role in communication. And lastly, there

is the networking of images and text where “images…reinforce the building of a network

of relationships that make a proposed “fact” difficult to attack” (Baetens, 2003, p. 186).

The latter point is especially important because it is this “networking” which makes

multimodal explanations so powerful. Each mode acts as a layer which can equally serve

to reinforce a message or give more depth to the point of view. The distinguishing feature

of new media is if course its hybrid nature brought about by different modes being

combined together. The challenge for students in creating such texts is to manage this

wealth of resources and to be able to not only distinguish what each mode is capable of

doing but how they can work together. Experimenting with texts like the photographic

essay foregrounds the importance of successfully fusing modes, in this case word and

image. Images have a dramatic immediacy, especially when they dominate a computer

screen. But images alone are too open to interpretation and need other modes to clarify

their significance.

New media has provided the means to better appreciate past communication practices and

to recognise their multimodal quality. Today, even the written word can be appreciated

for its visual qualities. Students need to experiment with both new and old media but in a

context where the multimodal nature of the task is fore grounded. This may be done by

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emphasising one mode as was the case in the PowerPoint task, but the challenge is for

students to experiment with effectively fusing the modes they are employing. Learning

how to do this can from analysing those text forms where this is a unique challenge.

The visual is an area rich in teaching possibilities. Fictional narratives that consist of a

sequence of images are made truly possible for our students because of the relatively easy

access to images through the use of digital cameras and the Internet. It also allows us to

revisit the pioneering experimentation of John Berger and Jean Mohr in such works as

their photographic story If each time… (Berger and Mohr, (1982). We need to reclaim our

own sense of the visual and not just move through a visual environment intent on

celebrating consumerism and where corporate icons are worn proudly. We can choose to

visualise the world differently. When Joseph Conrad said, “My task, above all is to make

you see” (Conrad J, 1897, p. 13), he was expressing his belief that language had the

power to transform our perception of life. An engagement with the visual can do the

same. Thinking about the visual is important, but so to is the pleasure that comes with

playing with the visual and drawing on its power to change the way we see life.

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