July 2008: Learning From Pictures

“A picture is worth a thousand words.”
—proverb, with English origins sometimes attributed to Fred R. Barnard

When you look at this picture, what do you think about?

How about this one?

Can pictures help you learn within the many ways they will trigger you?

Can pictures capture your learning better than a thousand words ever will?

What do you learn when you produce pictures of your own, whether with a camera, a pencil, a collage, or even a verbal description of it?

These are some of the questions we hope to explore in our Joyful Jubilant Learning theme for July: Learning from Pictures.

To contribute this month (and we hope you will!) this is what you do:

1. Post a picture (and just 1 per post) whether you have drawn it, snapped it, pasted it together or borrowed it (but it does have to be digitally scanned somehow, and permissible for us to publish it – more on that tomorrow, let’s talk theme for now…)

2. Write about your learning connection to that picture in only 300 words or less. Yesterday I told you we’d be lightening up in July, and a thousand words can be pretty heavy…(300 words is about half as many as in this posting:)

Here’s a tip: You can also start a discussion in the 300 words you publish, for the words that end up in the comment conversation don’t count!

3. Email us to reserve your posting date: We will only publish one contribution per day between July 5 through 24. You can actually do this first if you are ready to commit right now just hearing about the theme! You’ll be expected to finalize and submit your draft 48 hours in advance of your assigned publishing date. Read number 4 first though…

4. A New Guideline: Guest Author reservations are accepted when you are recognized as having commented for us before on JJL. This is a learning community that is based on collaborative learning as a critical core value: We will no longer be providing the pages of JJL for writers primarily interested in publishing-as-broadcasting. Guest Authors are expected to entertain and joyfully engage in comment conversation with the rest of the community, and it helps to have some past experience with doing so here already logged up and learned.

Here is a preview of the rest of the July Calendar:

• July 1 – Today: Hear about the month’s theme, and find out how to get published here.

• July 2 – Featured Extra: A Mini Lesson on publishing photographs with a Creative Commons License (by Rosa Say) Learn how to publish photographs taken by others with permission, and with proper attribution.

• July 3 – A Special July Within-the-Theme Learning Project: Joyful Jubilant Learning on Flickr (by Joanna Young): Find out about the public group that JJL has on Flickr and how you can join in and participate all month long --- and going forward.

• July 4 – 24 We jump into Learning From Pictures - full throttle!
  

• July 25 – Rapid Fire Learning (hosted by Chris Owen).

• July 26 – 31 The last week of every month is about All Things Learning: Some may continue to post on our theme, others may introduce new subjects. Most of us will use this time to catch up with anything we missed earlier, jumping back into the comment conversations.

Ready? Let's do July! The Joyful and Jubilant Learning we all do continues, and our intention is to help you celebrate it.
Rosa Say, for Joyful Jubilant Learning

Comments

[Joanna Young]

Rosa, I'm really looking forward to this theme.

Since joining flickr I've found a number of photoblogs to follow, as well as following the photostream of some flickr users by RSS. Many photos give me pause for thought, reflection, and learning - in a different way to words and writing.

The first picture in this post is very powerful. Of course I'm lucky enough to have seen it before and know what it meant to you... to me I think it symbolises the dawning of a new day. How we can learn to keep shaping and creating our own reality, joyfully and jubilantly, day by day... even better if in the company of great colleagues and friends

Joanna

[Dianne]

Yes! Let's do July ... I'm ready, Rosa!

June was my first month on flickr and I can't tell you how grateful I am, for the lessons learned, for wonderful new friends and for exciting possibilities. I am so looking forward to July and to your Learning from Pictures theme!

Joanna, I love what you say about Rosa'a gorgeous picture symbolising our learning and our growth together, you're so right ... everything is all the more delicious when shared with friends.

To me, it's a very hopeful image as the sun slips through the clouds, a reminder that the sun is always shining even if we can't see it for a while.

The second image is amazing and has triggered all sorts of thoughts, Rosa! Perhaps the loveliest one is the thought that whoever tied this, did so with love and care and attention to detail. I imagine they were lost in the moment, feeling the string in their fingers, slowly and carefully building something secure and lasting, while also creating something very beautiful. Thank you, it really made me smile, Rosa!

Wishing all on JJL a Joyful Jubilant July filled with exciting possibilities!

:o)

[Rosa Say]

Aloha Joanna, and thank you. Ka lā hiki ola is such a powerful value, isn’t it? Powerful in its sense of hope and promise, and so fabulously optimistic, and like you, I am filled to the brim with optimism about the month to come! I have always thought of myself as a visual learner primarily, and Flickr seems to have reinforced my self-perception greatly.

Aloha Dianne, what you have said about the sharing aspect of Flickr describes why I think the JJL sub-project we have coming up this month here involving Flickr is such a match made in heaven for us: The central value of JJL has always been *collaborative* learning, with all that joy it can bring us over and above the solo studies we all are engaged in.

Dianne, I also love what you said about the rigging photo, for I also feel there is so much to be read within each precise line, placement and knotting of the rope. Watermen have told me that both one's skill and temperament can be "read" within the final result of rigging, and that with a single look those who know this reading will feel the utmost confidence in the safety of the outrigger canoe --or not.