Even librarians are admitting that their reading habits are changing; that the number of long novels read decreases each year. Students often want a book that’s less than 200 pages: to the rescue (collective loud sigh) comes a niche product: lazy library.

YouTube – Royksopp – Remind Me is not a new clip, but this day I’m thinking of the power of text, image and motion in short, brief bursts. While traveling to a workplace to be online is almost dated, the video still gets across the fact that we are constantly surrounded by data, with the need to read and make sense of many different visualizations.

At the end there’s a shot of beer stats, otherwise the clip would be great for use with students.

Do students know what’s currently posted on class bulletin boards or school hallway signs?

Could they create a slice-of-life photo stream of the data in their daily lives, or gather examples of data used in different careers?

Might they compare the reading levels of web pages, or chart their own reading preferences?

There’s plenty of online tools for presenting photos and data in jazzy ways. Student responses would make a nice collaborative exhibit to post on a class wiki; while building their knowledge of media and visual literacy.

“For 500 years, we’ve taught our children to read words. The time has come to teach them also to read the powerful images and sounds of their multi-media world.” __Center for Media Literacy

UPDATE: In this morning’s SnagIt newsletter, “excellent blog post by Kathy Sierra.”
“A quick excerpt for the truly time-challenged:

A pile of evidence supports that people learn more deeply from words with pictures than from words alone (Mayer, 1989b, Mayer and Gallini, 1990; Mayer, Bove, and others, 1996.), and overall, several studies combined have shown a median percentage gain of 89% effectiveness.

Sierra also makes a case for putting text captions on pictures instead of under them—an intriguing concept.”