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Taking visual reading notes is not just for so-called "visual" learners. Everyone can benefit by visualizing what they are reading and making notes as they read. Review of notes later is also key to success in remembering what is read.

As always, I feel like these are just good teaching strategies: we are all visual learners to a large extent. That's why the visual cortex is so important in the brain, and relates to reading as well as seeing. But if you are a fan of Gardner, this is a good article for you.

This blog explores some of the reasons our brain is hungry for visual information, and why wee need more visuals in the classroom, whether it's land-based or flipped.

"Visual Writing Prompts is a great source for engaging writing prompts. You can browse their collection of writing prompts by genre, grade, or subject area. The prompts are written directly on each image. "While it's a great source of writing prompts already, it is a site in-progress. They are in the process of adding additional information to each prompt. The prompts that have already been completed include a prompt explanation, an explanation of any relevant vocabulary and language, and a convenient one-click download button." I always used a set of images, culled over years of browsing magazines and newpapers, as writing prompts for various types of writing. This site has the prompts built-in, which can be an advantage for the busy teacher, or a disadvantage if you don't want to find something that precisely fits your assignment goals. You can also have students create their own portfolio of images and prompts to share with other writers. T/H to Nick LaFave.

A cute infographic (?) of the what and why. Visual notetaking is encouraged for lectures and readings, and may help students make the material their own. I would recommend a combination with text notes, as students do need practice in all kinds of writing.

"Storybird is a free online service for families, friends, teachers, and students to collaborate in creating short, visual stories together that can easily be shared, embedded or printed. The website provides fun and simple tools to make short, visual stories in a user-friendly and kid-friendly environment. You can search by artwork or theme to begin. Stories can be written by one person or two or more people in a round robin fashion and can be shared privately or publicly. Publishing with Storybird is "global, viral, and instantaneous" which provides extra motivation for young authors and artists."

Free book (pdf) from the British Council, written by Gary Motteram. Probably published early 2012. Has sections on primary education, secondary, and general adult language education, ESP and Business English, EAP, and assessment. Nice examples from real classrooms.

"A little while back I saw a Netflix Template for Google Slides. It's essentially a template to replicate the screens you view when looking at episodes for a Netflix series. I immediately loved the idea of creating a Netflix series for a novel (displaying an understanding of plot, setting, characters, etc.). " T/h N LaFave

R. Stannard has created a tutorial for wallwisher.com, now called "Padlet" This tool is nice for creating a visually oriented board of notes where students can tell others what they are doing, for example, on a project; or to keep interesting photos and weblinks.

Explains how to add videos to you Google document/forms. However, the video has to be from YouTube or another online site, not uploaded and stored directly in Google.

"As you design blogging assignments for students consider that text may not always be the best medium to have students use to express ideas and share information. For the student who is trying to quickly convey an idea or share research that he or she compiled, posting an infographic or a video presentation might be a better method of sharing than writing a long passage of text and hoping that readers make it all way through to the end." R. Byrne discusses a short list of tools, including Infogram, Thinglink, YouTube, and SoundCloud, that help students make ideas visual and aural/oral.

Infographics are all the rage. I think they used to be called graphs or illustrations, but they have the flair of lots more visuality -- colors, icons, photos, animation, and interactivity are all part of these applications. R. Byrne's describes them all and has links to some of these tools, plus a few extras.

Download the free book, or follow the 10-step synopsis provided in this article. We are awash in a sea of information; help your students figure out how to use data. Rec by Nick Peachy.

Stop-motion animation would be a great project for middle school and high school students. Teaches planning and patience.

The software iStopMotion is fun to use and suitable for kids. See other articles on stop-motion animation and the TED-Ed videos at Animation Basics 101: http://blog.ed.ted.com/2016/07/13/animation-basics-101/

Neat way to quickly find a color and its contrast with the appropriate web RGB numbers. A tool for student projects.

Add a voiceover or video to your PPT presentation with PowerPoint, Google Docs or PDF (Keynote and Prezi). This useful little screencast app helps make your ppt more understandable. Or have students use it to make their own presentations. R. Stannard's training video shows how it works: http://www.teachertrainingvideos.com/presentme/index.html

An outstanding online image editor for all purposes. Relatively easy to use.

"Using Visme you can add motion to virtually any object be it an image, icon, text, shapes or even an i-frame or video layer." http://www.visme.com

R. Stannard shows how to use ELT Pics, which is hosted by Flickr. You can also get an email feed to show pictures as they are updated. A nice way to garner resources for writing or student projects. Pictures are crowd-sourced, and curated by EFL teachers. I use pictures often for teaching writing: description, emotions, cultural comparisons, etc.