The best practices highlighted here apply to charts, graphs, figures, and other supplements, including the legends or captions that accompany them.
Visual aids in the classroom are extremely helpful for students and teachers. To show and understand the point that is trying to get across. I feel that this is something that is now being enforced now more than ever with earlier grades, rather than just middle school and up.
Since printed materials, unlike their online counterparts, cannot be manipulated by the reader or read aloud by a screen reader, we need to follow best practices to increase their accessibility and readability.
I appreciate how this mentions accessibility. I have grown this semester to learn that accessibility is a need in the classroom. The only thing I question is, what if we have an emergent bilingual student or a student who struggles with reading and the resources of technology are limited? Or other current issue is how can we get students engaged in a reading on a technological device without having them wonder off, or retain the information that we are trying to get across.
The brain’s limited capacity impacts its ability to engage in active processing and, hence, to learn. We can avoid cognitive overload and facilitate active processing by reducing or eliminating extraneous information from our instructional materials.
I love this statement as a reminder to educators and as a reassurance to students. I feel as though times in high school and higher education that we are so much distress in our personal and academic lives that we feel as though we are not doing "enough" or learning "enough" because we are receiving so much content information. Now as a teaching perspective I love this reminder that brain breaks are NEEDED! There will be now growth for a student if the content is long and rigorous, rather we should engage with them, piece it up, and not be stress under a "time line" we are given.