Research to Practice: Helping Teachers Adopt the Picasso Model of Graphic Communication

Teachers are creating more and more media products that involve or perhaps should involve graphics. All sorts of graphics can be used to adorn and enhance media products from PowerPoint slide shows to web pages. The viewing audience has come to expect graphics just as virtually every medium today involves graphics. Logos, color, animations and more decorate and embellish every television commercial, billboard, product and publication. As people get more experience with the imagery throughout our environment they can actually get better at the “interpretation of visual media ” (Tyner, 1998, p. 107). This paper focuses on the challenge of creating the best or most appropriate imagery to maximize the communication value of graphics. Concepts and information of all sorts can be represented through visual imagery (Borg & Staufenbiel, 1992). Not all graphics serve the same purpose. Some enhance or delineate screen displays while others convey and represent information and more (Pettersson, 1993). Text seems almost omnipresent in media but graphics can be important for improving screen displays (Schaefermeyer, 1990; Aspillaga, 1992). Communication can depend on the appearance and overall design of graphic imagery (Descy, 1995; Van Brakel, et al., 1995). Research has shown that computer screen displays can affect learning (Costello, 1995; Hathaway, 1984) and retentio