Introducing Think In Pictures

As a designer and editor of multimedia educational materials, I have followed several excellent blogs centered on technology integration in education and on the ways web technologies can help facilitate student-directed learning. I am a latecomer to educational theory; my background is in journalism, design, and history, and my interests have always centered on on aspects or artefacts of human communication.

I am personally interested in the read/write web, in the use of blogs, podcasts, and the rest of the Web 2.0 to facilitate student-directed learning. But to the extent that teachers (or students) must still present some information in a structured, one-to-many format, I think something has been lost in the educational technology conversation. My interest in creating this blog is to discuss the ways in which one-to-many communication can be facilitated through the use of multimedia, and the way visually-oriented multimedia can assist educators in planning a teaching space in which discussion, participatory meaning-making, and understanding flourish. In pursuit of that topic, I am sure to touch on many others, from educational theory and research to experience-based observations, and from technical tips in multimedia production to discussions of contemporary art or cultural events that bring these issues into clearer focus. My overall goal is to maintain an emphasis on "the visual" in all things so as to offer a blog that suggests that "visualization" is at the heart of what we do as educators, and that there is a benefit to centering one's thinking along those lines.

To get a sense of where I'm coming from, take a look at my PowerPointers wiki, which offers research- and design-based guidance on the use of PowerPoint as a "visual medium."