An article I recently read by Suzie Boss entitled, “Teaching with Visuals:  Students Respond to Images” (available at http://www.edutopia.org/visuals-math-curriculum) is dated 2008, but it shows an example of how the next generation of students require a different kind of learning environment.  Students need to be able to interact with their curriculum material differently than the standard textbook style instruction of the past. 

Students are living in an increasingly visual world.  They have a large variety of digital media available to them at a very early age. I know of four year olds who can manipulate smartphones better than their parents.  Since this article was written, the types of technology available to both students and teachers has grown dramatically.  The role of the teacher is quickly changing from being the “expert” to the “facilitator” of knowledge, helping students learn how to use the many resources available to them to obtain and share their knowledge (thus interacting with many other experts as well as becoming the “experts” themselves).  Most of these resources are visual.   

I believe students no longer have the attention span to solely read information from a book or have facts dictated to them from a teacher at the front of the class.  Students need more!  They need to interact with the information, see, read from digital screens, and visualize what they are learning and then be allowed to create newly synthesized projects demonstrating their learning as well.  The visual products of cut and paste collages have past, for example.  Now there are countless software and freeware programs available for digitizing visual representations and manipulating images through the computer and even smartphones and other devices such as iPads.   

There are many styles of learning, and visual learning is just one of them.  But within the realms of such visual projects as podcasts, blogs, and the like, audio, visual, literary, as well as kinesthetic interactions can all be intertwined into one style of instruction, or educational project. 

The days of high quality visual instruction have arrived, and I believe are here to stay.  Visual representations of information provide access to information to not just the visual learners, but as mentioned earlier, to nearly every type of learner depending on the media utilized.  It can clarify concepts quickly, provide access to information previously inaccessible, and provide information quicker and more succinctly than can using antiquated methods.  As the old adage states, “a picture is worth a thousand words.”