Visual Technology Literacy

"By visual literacy, then, I will refer to the ability to read, understand, value, and learn from visual materials . . . as well the ability to create, combine, and use visual elements . . .for purposes of communicating". –Cynthia L. Selfe

Although we kept two Zenith black and white televisions for the whole of my childhood memory, we were one of the first family’s on our block in 1968 to own a color television. Our first one was a big, expensive console television that was more like a piece of furniture than a technological gadget. It became the focal point of the living room. A shrine at which we all worshipped. The gigantic TV antenna on top of the house signifying our conversion to the latest high technology. The old black and whites only needed the “rabbit ear” antenna on top of the set itself. Those televisions lasted forever, as Zenith lived up to its advertisement promise: “The Quality Goes In, Before the Name Goes On.” They were built to last – as were subsequent television sets built by Toshiba. I still have, and up until this past year, used the Toshiba television set my ex-husband and I received for a wedding gift back in 1987. Today, I enjoy a huge, flat screen television, hidden away in a cabinet in my home I share with my boyfriend. Today we hide the “boob tube” shrine – at least those of us who consider ourselves intellectuals who don’t need it on all the time, do. But, I’ll bet that new set does not last half as long as the televisions of my childhood. Technology is upgraded so fast today, it does not have to be built to last. Plasma televisions I have heard have only a five year life span. This is one of the things I have a hard time “buying into” about the latest technology. I like things to last. I guess that goes back to the age in which I grew up. Television eventually became a tool for learning with the advent of Public Television programs and later educational programs on cable TV. My generation learned to read and write without technology. Mine was the generation of “Think and Do” workbooks, “Dick and Jane” readers, and wet, fragrant, purple dittomaster worksheets. Computers in the schools were unheard of in the 1960’s and early 70’s of my elementary school days. Our visual learning consisted of film strips that teachers deftly rolled into weird brown machines with heat lamps or shaky reel-to-reel films that broke more often than not, manned by the geeky AV-boy in the classroom. My younger siblings (and, of course, later my daughter) did have the benefit of early literacy learning through the talented programming of shows such as Sesame Street, The Electric Company, and Zoom on PBS. I was too old to learn much from them in 1969, when Sesame Street was introduced, but, that didn’t stop me from watching and loving it. Here is one of my favorite memories of that show.