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Knowledge and information can be accessed and transmitted through myriad print sources. For example, we can access information through newspapers, magazines, encyclopedias, letters, documents, and web sites. We can also gain valuable knowledge, perspectives, and worldly understandings through other visual stimuli found in the media, such as pictoral representations found in company logos and traffic signs and messages transmitted through art, nature, and gestures. The National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) has deemed it necessary for students to "apply knowledge of language structure, language conventions, media techniques, figurative language, and genre to create, critique, and discuss print and non-print texts" (http://english.ttu.edu/kairos/2.1/news/briefs/nctevis.html). Visual literacy is a relatively new field of study. It continues to be explored and defined. The Literacy Dictionary defines visual literacy as "the ability to interpret and communicate with respect to visual symbols in media other than print" (Harris & Hodges, 1995). ERIC defines it as "a group of competencies that allows humans to discriminate and interpret the visible action, objects, and/or symbols, natural or constructed, that are encountered in the environment." This field of study outlines appropriate ways to bring visual literacy skills and strategies to students so that they are taught to "read the world" (Piazza, 1999). We can learn to read the world through the examination of visual arts, music, dance, and theater, including TV, film, and electronic media. "The visual arts offer ways to ask questions and respond to ideas and feelings in terms of colors, lines, movements, rhythms, textures, or perspectives. Music and dance suggest ways to hear and express ideas in tones, sounds, rhythms, distance, and space. Drama, film, and modern technology chart ways to invent and represent meanings in terms of images and point of view" (Piazza, 1999). These nonverbal forms of communication transcend linguistic barriers. Therefore, when we study such modes of communication, we have the opportunity to gain an international and global perspective—if we open ourselves up to the possibility.
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