Random Thoughts

I have talked before about my feelings of not being creative.  As I was walking to work this morning and passed the tree that I took a picture of the other day, I started wondering if I maybe really AM not creative.  If that is true, I am sure it is because I never developed that part of my brain rather than some congenital condition.

What I know is that I am not a visual person.  I really think that even when I see things, I see them as words and not as pictures.  Is that crazy?  That tree today was twisted and bent.  It didn’t speak to me in the same way that it did the day I took the picture of it.

But I want to be a visual person.  I want to see things and respond in non-verbal ways.

This is something I have been working on and thinking about for a couple days.  For the EVO sessions I am supposed to be working on this year (And I do mean “supposed to be” because I have done almost nothing!) I was working on an online portfolio.

You may or may not know tht I have an online portfolio.  It is nice and neat and filled with words.  But I wanted something visual, something more dynamic.  I have not really come up with anything that I like, but I have come up with something different.  Yesterday I added the flakes that at least make the online parts of my portfolio come alive a little more.  Today, after I read Jane’s post about Lovely Charts, I created and added the chart. This is still not toally what I was looking for, but it is getting there.

But this brings me back to the idea of learning to be visual.  I wonder why I don’t seem to see images.  To me, it explains why I cannot really take good pictures and why everything in my life is very word-oriented.

Does this make any sense?

Jenny’s other post was an example that I think Garr Reynolds and Dr. John Medina would approve of. It teaches chemistry in a very visual way. While I am sure some people will object to parts of this, the theory behind it is one that is definitely OK: We learn better with visuals. See what you think:

Chemistry was not really a favorite of mine when I was in school. No science was, really. But how much more might I have learned if I had had something like this to watch? The concept of attraction and separation of elements is made real. It is visual. It is in my brain.

Jenny Luca had a couple of posts that really caught my attention. One is a Slideshare presentation by Garr Reynolds on Brain Rules by Dr. John Medina.

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Not only is it a wonderful example of a presentation (of course!), but it also provides a few simple ideas that we, as educators, need to remember. Things like the fact that we don’t pay attention to things that are boring and that we remember pictures better than text. (If you know Garr’s take on presentations, that will sound real familiar!) He also talks about the fact that we need to exercise our brains.

As teachers, we need to remember these ideas and, I suspect, the other ideas in Dr. Medina’s book. I know I am going to check the book and the website out. Thanks to Jenny for the link!

Reading an old post on Sarolta’s blog, I found a link to Visuwords. It is a visual dictionary/thesaurus that shows part of speech, definition, and the relationship between that word and others.

This is an example of what it produced for the word connection.

Sarolta says she as begun preparing activities for her students using this site. I can see lots of potential.