Visual Thinking in Education
Humans are visual thinkers. A large part of the brain is dedicated towards the processing of visuals. All social media people vouch for the power of visuals in social media. We can see the power of visual thinking all around.
Effort has been made around the world to incorporate visual thinking in the learning content for all ages. When I was a kid, Indian government’s books were black and white and had very few visuals. These days government of India prints books which are visually better.
Visuals can be used in other places too. Most of the walls and pillars of government buildings and transportation infrastructure are empty. Government can paint the walls and pillars with course material to make education accessible to all. Concepts of maths and science can be converted into entertaining visuals and then painted on walls. It is expensive than putting plain paint on walls but if you compare that with the cost of putting up new schools it is not that big.
Interestingly many kids are very keen observers of walls and pillars. They will learn a lot of new concepts if this is done by governments. Schools can also paint their walls with visuals from the curriculum. That will help in revision.
These days digital printing is relatively very cheap. Thus even that can be used instead of paint. Even though painting is good for developing countries like India where it will also provide employment and is a little better for environment then flex based printing.
Visuals can take many forms. We can have diagrams, charts, mind maps or just small comics kind of stuff on the walls. An interesting example is the water molecule. It looks like Mickey Mouse. We can have a visual here we show that water molecule’s shape is like Mickey Mouse. Kids who find it interesting will remember the association. Mind works that way. We remember things which are interesting.
Alphabets, numbers, multiplication tables, etc all can be taught in form of visuals. They will also make the towns and cities more beautiful.
Parents can even decorate their kids room with such posters. That will help kids to learn without any effort since kids will passively assimilate the learning from them. The posters can be changed monthly or yearly to make room for new concepts.
Even social media can be used in this endeavor. Many parents have formed online communities to help one another. These visuals can also be shared online from where such parents can share them with other parents in social media.
Thus visual thinking is a very scalable idea to improve education.
