Visual learners
Many learners, adults and children, think and plan visually and many will also use visual aids to memorise words, ideas, facts, people, equipment or events. Many children in nursery school learn to speak and write using visual prompts and the same approach is used by teachers of modern languages who recognise that images are very important in, for example, the learning of vocabulary.
Many learners who have weaknesses or lack of confidence in their literacy skills rely upon visual prompts to help them access the subject matter. Many academic and vocational courses have a huge emphasis on the visual and with all of this in mind, there are numerous ways in which the Concept Map can be enhanced by importing images.
Clip art and photograph library
The full version of EyeWrite contains a comprehensive clip-art library and a library of approximately 2000 photographs. Users can import from either of these.
Other images
Many learners or teachers will have their own image libraries and any of these can be imported using the browse facility icon in EyeWrite. Many users will also make use of digital cameras and will be able to save images in jpeg format that can be imported in the normal way. Some mobile-phone cameras also allow users to transfer images to a computer in jpeg format. Such images can be used but many low-budget phones will only have very low resolution photographs that will be too small for showing in full screen format as a file link.
Web images
It is also possible for users to find appropriate images by browsing the web (e.g. Google Images), and many teachers will have particular sites that they use that are well known for their particular subjects. Users must be aware that most images on a site like Google are subject to copyright laws. However, teachers or learners using an image in an educational setting simply to illustrate a key point or idea will not usually have a problem with copyright.
Tutorial 6 Importing Images
Next
