Breannah Gammon

Unit Paper 2
This Units Big Idea is conservation and ecology. The approaches that we explored were visual
culture and social justice. Hurwitz and Day argue that students are so involved in visual
mediaand because the images projectedcan be so influential, art educators have recognized
a responsibility to educate students regarding the contemporary visual world in which they live.
(2007) This unit we were exposed to artists and educators attempting to give students and
audiences the tools to comprehend visual culture and extract meaning from it which can apply, in
this unit especially, to issues such as conservation and ecology. One artist we looked at used
images objects, such as paper cups, to demonstrate how many of these paper cups were being
used daily to draw attention to the issue. By using his platform as an artist to call attention to the
topic of wastefulness, the artist was practicing a form of social justice. In Barrets article he
emphasized the importance connotation and denotation in visual culture as teaching tools (2003).
By examining the denotations and connotations of an image students are able to do as Hurwitz
and Day suggest in their article, gain the perceptual and conceptual tools needed to analyze
meanings and motives of commercial imagery. (2007, pg. 282)
One way to implement these ideas using the big idea of conservation would be to have students
gather images from sources such as magazines or newspapers which either showed conservation
or wastefulness. Then, organize them accordingly in a collage and discuss what denotations and
connotations taken from these images made them associate them with either conservation or
wastefulness. They are thinking of how the media is using visual culture to influence them as an
audience.
References
Barrett, T. (2003). Interpreting visual culture. Art Education, 56(2), 6-12.
Hurwitz, A., & Day, M. (2007). Children and their art: Methods for the elementary school, (8th
ed.). Thompson Wadsworth.