Awareness and Perception

Raising awareness that there is even such a thing as perception among our elementary school kids is important. The realization that one has a perception of a certain culture or people… and the subsequent investigation why that is (religion, race, family, history, etc)… followed by a possible change or acknowledgment of the existence… is a process that is important.

Just a few days ago, a teacher at our faculty meeting showed us the following well known image of the old (or young) woman. She shows this image to her fourth graders at the beginning of the school year to illustrate that perception exists and that you and your eyes can be trained (taught) to see something different than at first view.

I am slowly reading my way through Dan Pink‘s book “A whole new mind”. I thought immediately of the example of “negative space”, he gives of the FedEx logo. I had never realized that there was an arrow between the “E” and the “X”. How easy is the arrow visible? Very… I just never knew about negative space, hence never looked for it…

How do you introduce, make aware, illustrate the existence of perception to your students? The Dove commercial comes to mind.
Here is another video I stumbled upon in YouTube, that brings the point of perception across quiet nicely as well: Silent Beat.

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