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Fengbin (Kathy) Zhao

learning designer, Beyondinno Design

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How can we visualize our learning: attend to information, recognize patterns, attach new ideas into existing mind fabric, & transfer etc?

Learning processes are complicated and abstract. Most current methods in teaching how to learn and think creatively have some drawbacks: 1. Abstract, 2. Boring, 3. Over-simplified etc.

In order to overcome these drawbacks, visualization might be the first challenge.

We need to figure out a way of teaching how to learn, like the ways of learning about a cell in "Animates a cell".

We need externalized model like the DNA model used by James Watson. Maybe the model is more like the net format arts in Janet Echelman's net-format sculpture: dance with the thinking force of a learner.

We need to transform the metaphors/analogies from hidden to unhidden, to help learners explicitly explore the power of metaphors and analogies.

We need to make the Concepts/Data in learning-sciences visible, in the way done by David McCandless and Aaron Koblin.

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    Fritzie Reisner 100+

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    Jun 26 2012: Promoting this sort of visual scaffolding of ideas and systems of ideas was, I know, an important part of my secondary teacher training a decade or more ago. There was no sense, though, that there was a dominant physical configuration that was superior but rather that students needed to learn to use their own sorts of concrete configurations to organize understanding.
    Of course a classical example of a visual structure to aid thinking is portraying locations in Cartesion two or three space or geographic locations on a map or globe. Another classical example is the use of the flow chart and another the matrix. Molecular model building kits have long been used to explain chemical configurations and bonding. Feynman diagrams are used in physics and I cannot remember what those diagrams are called with dots to make electron configurations visible in chemistry. Graphs of nodes and connecting segments are widely used to represent networks.
    Kids use bubble maps and other kinds of graphic organizers, starting in grade school to organize ideas.
    Are these the sorts of schematic strategies to which you are refering that capture potentially abstract content in a visual way?
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      Fengbin (Kathy) Zhao

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      Jun 26 2012: Hi Frizie,

      Thank you for your comments. I agree with you on all these strategies and techniques that you mentioned.

      Except that I mean applying in a set of specfic processes: learning processes.
      Maybe another way to state it is easier to understand: for example, the content is learning theories. How can all these strategies be applied into visualize events of learning? How to translate the academic language of learning theories into more visualized format?

      Ideally, students can be aware of their thinking, and beyond that to visualize their own thinking with the aid of some models and tools.
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        Fritzie Reisner 100+

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        Jun 26 2012: So you are asking what sorts of infographics best summarize learning theories or learning processes specifically? So, for example, you would want a graphic/visual representation of what constructivism means? Or a graphic representation of convergent thinking or of divergent thinking or spiraling or working backwards? The sort of thing speakers on these subjects create to portray the idea compactly in a power point presentation?
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          V Alexander

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          Jul 20 2012: I think it would really help kids if they had access to 3D displays they could manipulate in real space; it lends a visio-kinesthetic aspect to the new knowledge and the more senses involved, the greater the absorption.

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