Like other seemingly ordinary materials (cookbooks, street art, scrapbooks, etc.) the subject of our investigation--holy cards or (in Italian) "immaginette"--often function as rich repositories of personal and cultural memory as well as indicators of popular literacy practices. But to relegate them to the category of ephemera, as is customary with…

Children are natural visual learners--they have been absorbing information visually since birth. They welcome opportunities to learn via images as well as to generate visual information themselves, and these opportunities present themselves every day. The importance of visual literacy can be conveyed through conversations and the teachable moment,…

Many people believed that virtual worlds would end up like the eight-track audiotape: a memory of something no longer used (or useful). Yet today there are hundreds of higher education institutions represented in three-dimensional (3D) virtual worlds such as Active Worlds and Second Life. The movement toward the virtual realm as a viable teaching…

It is ironic that visuals are so integrated into postmodern American culture, and yet history instructors still seem so uncomfortable with them, evidently preferring written texts over visual ones. Historians who advocate the analysis of images speak clearly, loudly, and uniformly on one point: they urge instructors to move beyond using images…

What is it that images can do that cannot be done by words alone? This article illustrates and discusses how visual expressions act as helpers of dialogue--anchors of meaning. The main argument is that the inclusion of pictorial material is a useful way to develop poststructuralist thinking technologies to further expand our understandings of the…

In consulting on or creating a Web site designed to use works of art for teaching purposes, it is extremely important to be aware of the differences between seeing an artwork "in the flesh" and in reproduction. Museum educators are highly aware of this disparity and are therefore eager to have students visit museums to experience authentic works…

This article presents the authors' personal accounts and their experiences in working on mathematics using "arms." "Arms" is an idea that first appeared as a program written by John Warwick and David Wooldridge in an ATM publication "Some Lessons in Mathematics with a Microcomputer," 1983. The introduction to…

This article addresses the under-theorization of visual techniques for social science research applications through the cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT). The "problem" of "the visual" in research is given an ontological framing by highlighting the ways in which the use of visual techniques as research tools--designed…

This study examined the impact of e-book text-tracking design on 4th graders' (10-year-old children's) learning of Chinese characters. The e-books used in this study were created with Adobe Flash CS 5.5 and Action Script 3.0. This study was guided by two main questions: (1) Is there any difference in learning achievement (Chinese character…

The present study sought to explore the effects of Multimedia Computer-Assisted Language Learning (MCALL) programs drawing on two different text modalities on the vocabulary retention of Iranian EFL learners. The two groups under study received treatment on vocabulary items under two multimedia conditions: The first group received treatment on the…

Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITSs) that adapt to an individual student's needs have shown significant improvement in achievement over non-adaptive instruction (Murray 1999). This improvement occurs due to the individualized instruction and feedback that an ITS provides. In order to achieve the benefits that ITSs provide, we must find a way to…

The demand for good instructional environments presupposes valid and reliable analytical instruments for educational research. This paper introduces the "SMD Technology" (Surface, Matching, Deep Structure), which measures relational, structural, and semantic levels of graphical representations and concept maps. The reliability and validity of the…

An extensive body of scholarship has documented the way disciplinary texts and activities are produced and mediated through their relationship to a wide array of extradisciplinary discourses. This article seeks to complement and extend that line of work by drawing upon Witte's (1992) notion of intertext to address the way disciplinary activities…

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of diagrams and time-compressed instruction on learning and learners' perceptions of cognitive load. The following design factors, visuals (visuals and non-visuals) and time-compressed instruction (0%-normal paced, 25, and 50%) were presented to 216 university students to analyze learning in a…

When it comes to helping others learn, there is a simple piece of advice that is often recommended to educators: Show! Don't tell. While appealing to the visual learning style of an audience is always a good idea, there is a growing expectation for more than just static images. They want video, which can deliver more dynamic presentations with…