Aha Blog 1: Visual Symbols in My Life

From when I first wake to when I go to sleep visual symbols are all around me. Some are noticed and some get ignored because my eyes are so used to seeing them. I see them on practically all the products I use throughout the day. Every company has some kind of color or symbol that they use to make sure that people remember their product. I have paintings on my walls at home and they are also visual symbols. When I get out of the house and drive to work or school I see road signs everywhere that tell me the rules of the road. Most of the time they are clearly visible and the bright colors make them hard to miss, unless they are covered in snow.



Just about every building that I drive by has some kind of sign that distinguishes them from other places. There is a big billboard by my house that always catches my attention with its big flashy displays. Also, all over the television are symbols of all shapes, colors, and sizes.


Image from: http://www.visualphotos.com/image/2x4115531/snow_covered_stop_sign

They impact my life in that they help me get to where I need to get and to stay safe getting there. Visual symbols also help me choose where to go eat and what products to buy.

Visual symbols are all over and are very hard to miss. The struggle is just being able to train your eyes to notice them.


Part 2:

I ended the first blog by saying that it is difficult to train your eyes to notice visuals and now I’m going to end it by saying that the difficulty is with interpreting the visuals. As an educator it is crucial for me to always be observant of the visuals that I am introducing to my students. It is not just about the quality, but about the meaning and depiction that they portray. I have to make sure that it is always know why I chose or created what I did to represent a certain concept because what makes sense to me might not make  sense to the rest of the class.

Our last project about a word being worth a thousand images was very eye-opening to me. Some of the groups went into completely different directions than what I would have done with the images that they used to portray their word. It just goes to show that not only do a thousand images represent one word, but that those thousand images could be different for each person. I will definitely be more understanding when I see a representation from a student that I feel has no meaning, because they all have meanings just not always the same for all people.

After having seen so much and heard so much from my classmates I now realize that visuals don’t always have to be concrete. Our train of thought consists of images and the way that they can be “seen” is through communication. We need to learn how to express what we are thinking through some form of communication so that everyone can know what it is that we see in our minds.

I was right before that visuals are all around us,  but I had no idea how prevalent they are to my daily life and will be for the rest of my life.