Milton School has embraced a relatively new educational concept called visual literacy, which makes sense as more and more children are growing up in a world flooded in images.

 

By Annette McLoughlin

Milton School has embraced a relatively new educational concept called visual literacy, which makes sense as more and more children are growing up in a world flooded in images.

The way we communicate is radically different today than it was just ten years ago. And yet, according to Steven Apkon, author of “The Age of the Image: Redefining Literacy in a World of Screens” and founder of the Jacob Burns Film Center, “most of us are not aware of the grammar of visual communication, the coded messages of its style, or the practical components of its production. We are largely, in a word, illiterate.” Apkon, and through him, the Jacob Burns, aims to transform the way we “teach, create, and communicate so that we can all step forward together into a rich and stimulating future.”
It is through their many educational programs that the JBFC endeavors to educate the local community.  

 

Milton fourth and fifth graders participate in one of their grammar school programs, Minds in Motion, which gives students the opportunity to collaboratively write, storyboard, direct, and produce an original stop-motion animated film.

The student films made with JBFC have been screened at film festivals all over the world. And every Minds in Motion course culminates in a red-carpet premiere event at the center in Pleasantville.

This year, based on the enormous success of the JBFC program, Milton added a second visual literacy program with The Picture House in Pelham. The Picture House program incorporates similar concepts in its classes, however, the children create films rather than animation.