Images and visuality in ICT educational design

The concept of educational design emphasises the educational dimension in the development of ICT-based learning tools and environments, and in the form of models for the use of existing applications in learning cultures. The intrinsic breadth of various types of images creates new possibilities and challenges for the educational designer of learning processes. The digital media have moved the boundaries between images and other kinds of modalities (e.g. writing, speech and sound) and have augmented the possibilities for integrating the images and visuality in new forms of knowledge-building and in new learning cultures. The paper presents a technological and domain-oriented approach to understand the learning potentials and functions of images and visuality. The paper argues that the potential of the domain of images - both in terms of design and knowledge - is only made into an active part of an educational design, if the producer is skilled and knowledgeable about this.