Visual Literacy Day

Today was our first day of our pilot project of creating a vodcast for the San Jose Museum of Art.

I spent a lot of time going on school tours led by gallery teachers at the museum to work on my visual literacy skills. The museum staff was piloting a new program where they use questioning strategies about selected pieces of art to help students develop visual thinking strategies or (VTS). I also did some journaling and sketching throughout the day.

The museum staff asked us to choose a piece of artwork to use for our vodcast. We chose Slow Time in Arcadia by Roy de Forest. One of the reasons I chose it is because it had a sense of a story to it that I thought would lend itself well to a vodcast. I also thought the bright colors would make it easier to film and photograph. Allison chose it because she was drawn to the vividness and colors of the piece. She said, "This is a great California piece. The colors and style look like it is from the Western United States. San Jose is a great place to have this piece of art".

Late in the day we met with two members of the museum education staff. They led us through our own VTS discussion on our piece. This process is really helpful because when listening to others ideas you discover things about the piece you would have never picked up by yourself. As Rochelle Doorley told us, "VTS allows you to go further than you can go on your own with a piece of work".

Tonight we are working on our draft. We've tossed it back and forth between us a couple of times. It is nearing midnight and we are beginning to really like what we've written. We are going to email it off to Joan our third instructor for her feedback. It's been a good day!