An initiative that began in Brazil has now gone global, thanks to the creative way it inspires empathy for children facing battles with cancer. Hair loss due to chemotherapy can be particularly difficult for students who now must endure the stares of strangers and the questions of classmates.
In response, cartoon characters are "going bald" to show affinity and kinship with these courageous children. This month, artists of some of the most popular cartoons around the world are drawing their leading figures with no hair or with a head covering. The surprise by readers is meant to mimic the same expressions of wonder that childhood cancer patients confront everyday. NPR and other outlets have reported on this Bald Cartoons venture, launched by ad firm Ogilvy Brazil and cancer nonprofit GRAACC.
These images are particularly powerful to show in the classroom. They raise thoughtful topics of medicine and science, but even more, they generate authentic conversations about the bravery of young people with cancer. This dialogue fits neatly into a year-long curriculum about stereotypes, appearances, and perceptions.
The drawings also reveal the power of visual imagery. They point to the influence of media, especially in graphic novels and pop culture. The ability for a cartoon to make a difference speaks volumes about the prominence of pictures in today's society. That message alone is an important one to discuss with students. Social media users can download icons to temporarily replace their profile pictures to show solidarity with the cause.
For teachers who may have students diagnosed with cancer, there are a lot of good resources available to figure out how best to support children during their long and painful journeys. Especially important is making students feel welcomed upon returning to school and making them feel like their classmates still see them as "themselves."
Finally, the BBC recently reported on a clever new online game that teaches children about their cancer. Developed by HopeLab, the game is called "Re-Mission2," and the six interactives play like real video games, based in the terminology and enemy cells of cancer. Check out the video below for more information.
Most English and social studies teachers no longer view graphic novels as simply "long comic books." The educational benefits of blending illustrations with narratives have been well established. But rarely do books come along that masterfully capture the dynamic, eye-popping power of art and history.
The stunning paperback uses "Lincoln's words to tell the whole story of America's Civil War, 1776 to the present." The book is thrilling in its account of regional rifts and in its pictorial precision on each page.
Even more so, the book reinforces the key skills of graphicacy, where words and images unite to offer an enhanced presentation of facts and themes. Here, the sequential art translates action and communicates cause-and-effect for certain learners in ways that traditional paragraphs cannot.
We've been long-time admirers of the authors' prior creation, The United States Constitution: A Graphic Adaptation, which made our nation's foundational legal document accessible (and even exciting) for our middle-schoolers.
During a relaxing log-cabin getaway last month in
Woodstock, New York, we stumbled across a series of curious signs
peppered throughout the region. Our cousin Emily pointed out the
signposts near the Village Green. At first, they looked
like any other NY state historical markers. Upon reading them, though,
we realized that instead of documenting an important event,
the signs offered subtle commentary about political issues and cultural
touchstones. They flawlessly mimicked actual markers and stood out as
shrewd pieces of art.
The signs, it turns out, are the creation of Norm Magnusson. A prolific local artist, Magnusson calls these projects "art of social conscience." He envisions an I-75 Project in which similar markers would be placed in rest areas along the length of the interstate. Examples of his current creations include:
"On this site stood Karen DeWitt, who could not afford the prescription
drugs that would have saved her life;" and "On this site stood Robert
Oknos, who thought that global warming would not affect him in his
lifetime." On his website,
Magnusson notes that his creations "gently insert themselves into the
public realm," and he enjoys the surprise of passersby who stop to read
them. Says Magnusson:
"These
markers are just the kind of public art I really enjoy: gently
assertive and non-confrontational, firmly thought-provoking and pretty
to look at and just a little bit subversive."
Magnusson's signs tell stories in just a few words about the folly of
being politically dismissive. His works feature all of the hallmarks of
satire: an unexpected message, an acerbic tone, and immaculate
verisimilitude. We were most impressed by the amazing authenticity of
the pieces. It's almost
as though he used the same machine shop to render such medal-worthy
metallurgy. These signposts have caught the eye of several
other outlets (here, here, and here) as well.
Satire can be one of the trickiest genres to teach in the humanities.
Good satire requires a nuanced reading. It by definition
necessitates a two-stage understanding. A student must comprehend the
historical and/or literary background forming the foundation of the
piece, and then he or she must accurately read the author’s opinion to
discern reality from exaggeration. Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal”
in 1729 set the bar for intellectual send-ups. But practitioners such
as Aesop, Pope, Twain, Orwell, Pynchon, Trudeau, and Colbert have all
offered wry hyperboles on government and humanity.
Source: ASIDE
Visual satire is an emerging niche and can be a useful inroad to introducing students to social lampooning. Political cartoons, comic strips, graffiti, and billboards
all offer media for witty commentary. Both younger and older learners
can be guided through a visual dissection of these displays. We like the
4 Steps To Understanding An Image
as a helpful tool for parsing complex pictures. The best visual satire does not need panels or word bubbles, because
it thrives in its potent messaging of creative design and its skewering
partisanship.
For modern epitomes of visual satire, we think of "South Park" or "New Yorker" covers. Parodies and caricatures are enjoyable spoofs, while racist illustrations and minstrel shows of the Civil War era are unsettling examples. Online YouTube takeoffs of music videos are increasingly popular in their lip-synched ridiculousness. And many infographics are now gaining traction in their mockery of infographics themselves.
By the way, if you find yourself in the Woodstock area in late July, we highly recommend the Ulster County Fair for its welcoming atmosphere, riveting pig races, and dusty horse pulls. Also, Mexicali Blue in New Paltz offers some of the tastiest burritos we’ve ever had. Our favorites were the chili lime chicken and the achiote pork with coconut aioli.
This week the American Association of School Libraries (AASL) sent out the monthly e-news called HOTlinks: Information for Indispensable Education Leaders to its members with a link to its "Top 25" websites for 2011. To make the list, websites must be free and promote innovation, creativity, active participation and collaboration. What a treasure trove of information and timely for our mission of bringing designing information, graphicacy and visualizations into the classroom. One website in particular, SpicyNodes, stood out as an excellent source for creating visual representations for content area within the curriculum.
SpicyNodes is one of those websites that comes along and makes designing information a breeze to use with younger students. It is a Web 2.0 application that lets you visualize information by using bits of text, links, photographs and other types of media. These bits of information are placed in "nodes" ready to visualize in an interactive way on the web. It connects ideas through pathways that all intersect through a central point in a hierarchical or networked way. It can easily be used to combine data, images and facts. The following example is a quick demonstration of how to transform a static concept map on global citizenship into a simple interactive visualization.
These nodes can be shared in three ways by linking directly to a URL, using HTML, or embedding the code into websites. In SpicyNodes Cookbook (FAQs), you can find "recipes" for all sorts of suggestions, including Quick start, with simple straightforward illustrations on how to create nodes, or For teachers, with ideas on using SpicyNodes in the classroom. Students can take complex data and information to create their own interactive visualizations. The nice part about the website is its ease of use. As a teacher, it is clear how nodes would enhance learning the content of a lesson, and as a technology tool, they would work well on interactive whiteboards.
Our students are used to seeing infographics all the time. They’re just not always used to calling them “infographics.” For example, maps are infographics, because they represent geographic spaces with layers of symbolic data:
Just like with any wall map or geography atlas, the students need help deconstructing the information presented in the graphics. Legends and keys and color-coding apply equally to time-tested maps and on-line infographics. Students need tools, time, and practice to decipher them.
Science classes rely on graphics all the time to organize details. They understand that the organization matters, because it reveals the underlying significance – which is why one of these tables is canonical and the other has yet to catch on:
These are all infographics, at once remarkable and unremarkable in their familiarity. Other modern examples tap into the same sense of natural order and communicate ideas through science-seeming images. In this case, global aid dollars from country to country are displayed as their own neural network:
Magazines such as Puck and Harper’s Weekly established themselves as signature publications of the Progressive Era through their opinion-making political cartoons and celebrity artists. A good political cartoon succeeds based on its combination of image design and concise information delivery. The two essential questions to ask students when interpreting a cartoon are:
What do we see in this image?
What do these symbols and words tell us about the artist's opinion?
Online archives offer great tools to examine past events through primary sources. Cartoons today are also invaluable in comparing points of view about national news stories and teaching perspective and opinion to young learners.
An infographic is a visual representation of facts or ideas. Typically colorful and creative, infographics depict details and numbers in easily understood, attention-grabbing ways. Wikipedia points to the ability of information graphics to “present complex information quickly and clearly.”
Infographics are fun to look at, and they are great for teaching. Infographics divide ideas into categories. For example, they can reveal changes in public opinions or chart the popularity of websites.
Bold hues, expressive fonts, and nifty layouts all combine to make dynamic, eye-catching graphics that convey specific messages to the viewer.
We find all of these infographics catchy and appealing, and our students do, too. They are a great way to highlight discussions of current events in the classroom. They help make difficult news and economic concepts more approachable.
Political platforms, census data, and financial metrics all come to life with vivid colors and easy-to-read numbers that engage the eye. Creative graphics, just like editorial cartoons, emerge from long paragraphs of text to convey quick take-away messages that remain in readers’ and students’ minds.
For example, last month we used the Time storm tracker maps to make sense of the recent devastating natural disasters affecting the nation.
Infographics are good to share for a quick five-minute opener to a Monday lesson, or for layering into Prezi or SMARTboard presentations. Also, students get used to recognizing infographics and begin to include them in their own reports.
We’ll try often to share graphics in the news that we use in our classrooms.
Regardless of medium or era, education has always been the act of offering information for acquisition. “Learning” is the individual process, where one internalizes new concepts or skills. “Education,” though, is the active delivery – the technique of shaping and structuring ideas by an instructor so they are assumed readily and permanently by a student.
The two most obvious changes in educational delivery over the past 15 years have been the visual representation and immediacy of information.
Communication has advanced along an accelerating continuum from the town crier to the printing press to the telephone, radio, television, and Internet. The change in fact-finding, however, is different from simple communication.
Information channeling today is other-dimensional compared to the patterned practice of 20 years ago. In 1990, when a student needed to write a report on penguins or General Motors, he or she was dutifully dropped off at the library by a parent and picked up eight hours later with a folder of Xeroxes and microfiche printouts. Today the rapid and overwhelming access to information leads to a host of questions regarding accuracy, propriety, and property. Also, these facts and opinions are typically encountered on the visual screen.
Howard Gardner’s learning styles seem somewhat quaint today now that every child is a visual learner. An updated system should be called “Visual+”, meaning “visual” and then some other intelligence. From infancy, kids are babysat by televisions. They absorb fairy tales from picture books and point to themselves in their own digital photographs. As teachers, we, too, rely on the immediate, pictorial nature of facts when we need to find a quick historical photograph in Wikimedia or search directions on Google Maps or snap a QR code with our smartphones.
We try to remember that if we as teachers aren't using something anymore, it seems strange to make our students use it -- just because "we did it when we were their age."
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