Images Can Add Information
Activity:
1. The applet called Exploring Images is best used as a group activity. Show the first slide on a screen or large monitor and ask the students to guess which answer they think is correct.
2. Ask then what makes them think it. Ask for other ideas until all four options have been names and reasons for chosing them have been articulated. Then take a vote and select the answer chosen by most of the students.
3. When the image appears, ask the students to respond to the prompts and read the feed-back aloud.
4. Ask "How could we have known that it was this answer?" Discuss until a student says that there was no way to know. Then agree and tell them that this is because the image brings new information, more than the information contained in the text.
The Main Idea
When students think about illustrating text on a slide, they often look for pictures that "match" the words. So for a sentence like "Fishing is the biggest industry," they try to find a picture of people fishing or of a fishing boat or maybe a basket of fish in a market.
They need to understand that the words and the image do not have to be redundant - that the picture can add new information rather than just "match" the words.
The sentence "Fishing is the biggest industry" does not need a picture to convey its message. But the words "How do they earn their living?" when accompanied by a picture of a fishing boat, might be more dramatic - and therefore more persuasive. Here, the picture carries information rather than just "matching" the words.
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