Look Here! Using Visual Media to Teach Critical Thinking

Preconference Workshop - Joann Martyn, Academic Computing Coordinator for Arts, Performance, & Recreation, Carleton College
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Doing a fair amount of idea generation in this session - it must be Monday and CDT day! So far there are not too many ideas that we have not considered before - so team, we're up there with the best. It's good to see some of our conversations underlined by other voices here and I do sense people are just warming up - especially those that have had to travel from blizzard bound parts of the US.
Good things so far. Blooms Tax expressed as verbs: Creating, Evaluating, Analyzing, Applying, Understanding and Remembering.
Didn't take long to find people wanting to talk about SL - the ultimate visual environment. Univ of Illinois get students to create a school in SL. Must check this out.
Visual scaffolding - visuals helping to keep students in scope (eg Maps)
What-if scenarios - changing viz plans, etc
The session considered two significant group assignments: creating a magazine on topic 'x' . So many opportunities (in fact too many outcomes if you're not careful). Of particular interest is the opportunity to actively develop understandings of copyright law. I never thought I'd say that, but really in student generated content projects we ought to actively look at ownership and ethics around copyright.
The second significant project considered was a video documentary assignment. Videos were developed by students to generate class discussion - and it was the discussion that was assessed rather than some of the technical stuff. I have extensive notes if anyone's interested in discussing this later.