Group items tagged

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.

"See the best data visualizations on the web all in one place." Mainly infographics--charts and informational maps. Students could upload their own graphs, et al., for comment and feedback, and the site purports to be creating new data visualization tools.

Paste in a text, and WordSift will create a word cloud and an accompanying visual diagram of words used in the passage, as well as visual images that illustrate the meaning of the word. Students can then click to explore all the possibilities. A great tool for visual learners!

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.

Prezi is a flashy presentation program, but once you master the intricacies, creates very beautiful and visual compelling presentations. One advantage over the old PowerPoint is the ability to show how ideas relate to one another visually -- like visual Venn diagrams that swirl in and out, that grow as their significance increases. Worth a try. And available from the cloud, desktop, iPhone, and iPad.

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.

"But there's a big difference between watching a video and learning something from it. Videos are great for presenting visual information and emotional appeals, but not particularly effective at diving below the surface of non-visual theoretical or abstract topics or for driving critical thinking.... (Nielsen, 2013)" Offers 4 tips on how to successfully incorporate instructional video into your class. Takes some lessons from strategies used in Coursera.

Yet another tool to help students visualize math problems, social studies, etc.

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.

A very visual way to archive and share what you find on the Web. Introductory video. Combines digital archiving with a visual mind-mapping interface. Connects to Facebook and Twitter and Google.

The Visual Understanding Environment (VUE) is an open source software that can be used for creating concept maps for the language classroom.

Twitter has a nice API for collecting tweets around a particular hashtag. This is especially useful if you have created an event and want to use a Twitter thread for continuing conversations. The API uses Google Spreadsheets and it allows conversations among participants to be "replayed" with an infographic. Very nice archived visualization.

"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."

"Graphic organizers have become a valuable tool for helping students learn to analyze and process information. The visual format makes organizing, interpreting and understanding new material quicker and more successful than simple memorization alone. The graphic organizers on our site were selected for their value and broad appeal to many different educational situations. " Offers a number of visual organizers created in PDF format to download. You don't load in any data online, but they look like a help for organizing student projects

A blog for the young and young at heart (middle-highschool). This blog-makr really focuses on the visual, so your students can get very creative. Not for the visually impaired--or the impatient. It can take a while to load as an embedded widget. But it is fun to use their graphics, and you can upload your own photos and videos. Good for project advertisements.

"Information is very powerful but for the most bit it is bland and unimaginative. Infographics channel information in a visually pleasing, instantly understandable manner, making it not only powerful, but extremely beautiful. Once used predominantly to make maps more approachable, scientific charts less daunting and as key learning tools for children, inforgraphics have now permeated all aspects of the modern world."

"Dipity is a free digital timeline website. Our mission is to organize the web's content by date and time. Users can create, share, embed and collaborate on interactive, visually engaging timelines that integrate video, audio, images, text, links, social media, location and timestamps. " Looks like this would be great with student projects. Very visually powerful and Web-capable.

"No reliable research has ever demonstrated that instruction designated as appropriate for any "tested" learning style is effective because it matches that style. The research is missing several important control validations. For example, there are no statistically valid studies comparing the response of a mixed-learning-style control group with the results of a learning-style-matched group. To qualify as "effective," there must be support of claims that superior outcomes are the direct result of teaching to individual learning styles and not a general result to the instruction. There is no evidence that "visual learners" have better outcomes to instruction designed for "visual learners" than do mixed-style learners taught using the same instruction. Without comparison groups, the before and after results could simply mean that the particular instruction is the most effective method for teaching that specific content to all students (Pashler, et al)." Excellent blog debunking some of the neuromyths that instruction is guided by, particularly in the public school system of the U.S.

This is a great place for students to SEE visually how words and expressions relate to each other. A must for the visual learner, but wonderful for everyone. Try an expression like "go out" to see how idioms are related to the original meaning.