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In the class Methods and Materials for Teaching Visual Arts at the Secondary School Level, we are testing the idea of teaching two high school level classes through visual learning. When I say visual learning, I mean the students are given one postcard that has some type of visual image and the student then creates a visual response. There will eventually be a series of postcards that will go back and forth between the graduate Art Education student and the high school student as a form of a visual communication or conversation.

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In the Postcard Visual Learning Project, each potential Art Educator (the graduate student) is paired with a high school student. This pair, the teacher and the student, will exchange about 5 to 8 postcards over the entire semester. The purpose of the experiment is to see if one can teach a student strictly through the use of a visual image.

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As a class, we decided that since this project is being split into two separate art classes in the same high school, we will make one class a little more guided than the other.  In one class, the students will receive the postcards and will be guided by the teacher to look closely at what type of art it is or what art element/principle is being communicated through the visual image.  In other words, what is the artist trying to teach you through the visual image and then respond.

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Students in the other high school class are simply given the postcard and asked to respond to it with no guidelines given by the teacher.  As a result, we are interested to find out if more or fewer guidelines need to be set by the Art Educator for students to learn the objectives of a lesson.

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In the future, I will post the student responses and what we have discovered from their visual responses!