Visualizing with Technologies

As someone who relies heavily on visual aid in my own learning process, I am a huge supporter of the sort of tools offered in Visualizing with Technologies.  In particular I enjoy tools that allow users to interact, so I have to say I found things like Sketchpad and TinkerPlots especially interesting because of how much I remember struggling in grade-school mathematics, and wonder how much that could help students like me.  I also love the idea of Discovering Education because since I was young I've been a huge fan of what the Discovery network stands for and does for kids.  Bringing Discovery videos into the classroom is a great thing, and I was pleasantly surprised by the number of pre-made lessons they offer for teachers--not just science teachers but for each of the core grade-school disciples too.  I also thought the Safari Montage packages were a clever idea to bring a good variety of visual programs into the classroom.  In general, visual support tools are incredibly important to me and the ones provided seem to be fantastic assets to any teacher.

I believe visual aid tools weren’t used enough when I was in grade school and that they serve a natural role in the learning process that was sorely missed.  It’s one thing to verbally explain something to a student—they may nod and claim they understand—but when something can be quantified through visual example, it’s far more likely to be retained.  When students see something being demonstrated or have hands on experience with something, they literally see their questions being answered and have something to visualize for future reference.  A student may think to himself/herself “I know how tiny the Earth is compared to the Sun because I saw a scale model of the solar system and thought ‘wow!’”  That retention more than likely wouldn’t occur if they were simply told information.  With the increasing popularity of things like mobile apps and online photo/video sharing, visual tools are naturally becoming more popular every day.  The fact is that people love to visualize things, and educators should strongly consider using that interest as often as possible.