Visual Learning

My learning styles analysis seems very imprecise. One thing I noticed was that often either answer would be correct – picking out which one was correct more often could be very difficult. It would have been better if there was some way to account for this.
Regardless, the result suggested my learning styles are for the most part fairly balanced. The one very clear exception to this was on the verbal vs. visual scale, which was totally skewed to the visual side. However imprecise the test may be, I think it was quite correct in this assertion. According to the site’s explanation, most people are more visually oriented, which really is not surprising. We learned to read books with pictures before we read books with text, and than with all text. I do not know if it is common to be on the far left of that scale, like my result was. It does imply that I would be much better operating in visual medium as opposed to an audio one, and that I should seek to use multimedia tools that emphasize visual presentation and avoid the use of those that emphasize audio presentation. There are plenty of projects and activities in education which involve operating in the visual medium, or in both the visual and audio mediums. There seem to be fewer that involve only the audio medium. A exercise that presents infomation in a exclusively audio format would probably be harder for me to follow. Both audio and written text require me to construct images from them in my mind; in a visual format, the images are constructed for me. do other people try to construct images, or do they not need them, either inside their head or out?
Visual elements, besides being appealing to the eye, can convey much more information than text can in a comparable space. However, visual elements can be more than just supplemental, they can also be a central and fundamental part of a course. One example of this from my own experience is when I took a GIS class from a geography department. This course centered on using ESRI’s program ArcView to study and present geographical information, be it economical or social factors, physical geography, or anything else. The imagery was more closely integrated with the technology – it was not just easier to do it on the computer, it had to be done on the computer. And the advantages of the program (and the maps and figures we generated using it) when it came to not just displaying but also analyzing information were enormous.
Visual images (actually, just what other kind of images are there?) are made more interesting by movement – and so video is becoming an increasing common tool in education. The most basic use of this is the presentation of films or videos in class in a traditional method, mainly with a VCR (or, less frequently a movie projector). This has been around for quite awhile. Jerome Bruner’s 1960 book the Process of Education (which we have been reading for 522) discusses it (while stressing it should not replace the teacher). Videos do not have to be shown to inform about a particular subject; they can also be used to generate discussion in general. One person I know who teaches an English composition class recently showed them the documentary movie Flock of Dodos, not so much to teach them about science education, but to provide a subject around which they could write. It would be much less stimulating to attempt this in a different format.
Increasingly, films have shifted from video to online. One example from my current experience here at Drexel is a couple of films we have been viewing online for 520. One is an hour long clip on science education, that provides not only a view of a science exercise, but subsequent analysis of it by a panel of teachers. Another is a series, The Education of Mrs Groves, that consists of several short clips of life at a middle school. The use of films online makes it easier for students to watch them at a more convenient time – freeing up class time.
Watching videos and films is one thing. But what about making them? This has been a much less frequent activity for me, both in high school and in college. When it has been done, it was not really to present information, but rather as an artistic project (often for a Spanish class). Furthermore, it was always done using conventional VCR technology.
In reviewing this, I find two visual tools that attract the most interest from me. One is spatial infomation software, like ArcView. Using this to present infomation in more visual and interactive ways make it attractive. The other would be using computer (as opposed to older video technology) to create short films - and not just for an artistic purpose, but also to present infomation that would normally be presented through static words or images. A project that could make use of both of these would be very attractive to me I think.