Bit ‘o setup

I think the TPACK framework is one of the most influential things I have learned about/grappled with this past year.  As an instructional coach in the middle of an educational technology implementation, this is one piece I have relied on heavily for personal focus and planning.

One thing I worry about with concepts of this depth (that possess a graphic illustration so perfectly simple) is that the real idea gets misinterpreted by any old joe who does a copy/paste of the Venn diagram from a Google image search.  You’ll see what I mean in the diagram below.  I’m not saying the diagram is in any way off the mark.  What I am saying is that the visualization is so elegantly simple that I think for some it might not at first glance convey the sophistication of the concepts presented.  Would I change it?  Not one bit.  I think it is a really good example of distilled reality.  Judge for yourself:

When it works

However, this post isn’t just another nod toward the synthesis of visualization and concept present in the TPACK framework (formerly TPCK).  It is also about a brief and recent e-mail exchange between one of the originators of TPACK and I.  Punya Mishra, professor of educational technology at the College of Education at Michigan State University, has been a fixture in my blogroll since I started nashworld.  In my opinion, the TPACK framework is one of the few things in educational technology that you can truly hang your hat on.  Tools will come and go, popular methods of instruction will as well…  and content?  Content changes in the blink of an eye in 2009.  However, to me this framework is core to what we do (or should be doing) in education.  And with a mouthful like “technological pedagogical content knowledge,” it really does help to have a visual representation that nails it cold like this one does.

Inspiring connections

I honestly don’t remember exactly how I first found Punya’s blog, but I instantly connected to the eclectic nature of it.  Particularly, the fact that he is not only deep into edtech, but is also a huge fan of all things regarding the visualization of information.  I too am fond of creative and innovative ways of visualizing data of all types.  My mixed life as a generalist instructional coach (who also teaches biology and marine biology) is one that often blends strategies for learning data with methods of collecting and interpreting it.

From reading his brief but frequent posts sharing precious nuggets of visualization, I now think of his blog whenever I find one of interest that is new to me.  So just a few weeks ago, I sent a different sort of link that included a visualization about visualizations…  and to top that, it was bent and twisted into the familiar form of the “periodic table” of elements.  My knee jerk on this one was not favorable.  However, I thought I’d e-mail it to Punya to get his objective take.  What developed into a small back & forth via e-mail, then developed into a full-blown post confirming not only what I thought he might find, but then quite a bit more.  For a table about visualization methods, this could easily serve as an “anti example” itself.

Visualization risks

Punya makes the case that it works to do this in sort of a humorous way, and provides several examples in his article.  I even have an example of this hanging above the sink in my own classroom.  The Periodic Table of Fruits & Nuts was given to me as a gift back in the days when I taught an Honors-level Botany course to Juniors & Seniors.  We had fun with the poster.  In fact, it is quite pretty and really does display a ton of information.  But I always made sure to point out the massive misconception machine that it was… in taking the shape of the periodic table of elements.  The main point being, the table of elements is the shape it is because of the periodicity of the elements within.  I assure you there is nothing periodic about the latin names of fruits, nor the caloric value of the nuts in my poster.

Everything that deceives may be said to enchant.

~Plato

Upon more closely mining the site for the source of this document, I finally found the original paper by Ralph Lengler & Martin J. Eppler of the Institute of Corporate Communication, University of Lugano, Switzerland.  So, I suppose it makes sense that this does not have roots within the natural science community.  All scientific inaccuracy, and creation of misconception aside, the authors apparently realized a few of the limitations themselves.  The conclusion on page five states that the chart, “…cannot be seen as a close adaptation of the periodic table of chemical elements. It is rather a functional, metaphoric homage to it.”

However, the Plato quote above was lifted from another paper linked to the site, from the same university, entitled: “The Risks of Visualization.“  It seems that this second paper might have some further suggestions for the first, huh?  There are some other interesting non-examples presented in this paper.  Check them out toward the end of you have time.

What is happening?

Are you doing this at all?  If so, how do you address visual literacy in (or out) of your curriculum?  What do you do to help students acquire skills in this area?  What supporting sources do you use?  Do you have a colleague who is doing this really well?  Have them weigh in.  I want my kids to be visually literate.  I think addressing this by the time a student is 18 is important.  I think I personally have a reasonable level of skill in this area.  I try my darndest whenever possible to address visual literacy.  However, this is a far cry from being organized, efficient, and well-equipped to do so.

Holiday break, for an educator for sure, is a time to spend time with family and friends…  regroup, and just relax.  It is a time for reflecting on the previous year (if you haven’t already) and planning for the year to come.  It is also a time for indulging in fun.  Fun food, fun drink and even some just plain…  silliness.

So before I return to my three young ladies for the evening, allow me to introduce you to a very fun time-waster.  Really-  if you are a bit more motivated, this site could really even be a valuable marketing tool for your classroom or department.  As I said-  this certainly isn’t a post to turn your educational philosophy on end.  This isn’t definitely not a post that will add significantly to your pedagogical repertoire.  Forgive me, for I too, am on holiday break.  This post is to educational technology as cheesy spinach & artichoke dip is to nutrition.

If you have read this blog for even one day, you know that visual literacy is fundamental to my core.  I can’t write a paragraph without an image helping my cause.  Perhaps this is an homage to my realization that human words cannot do justice to a carefully crafted photograph. Perhaps as well, this marks one more post on this blog as of late that isn’t so grippingly “instructional” or “edtech.”  However, hopefully you have checked out my About page by now.  That  -in a very indirect way-  explains the hierarchy here.  I hope that works for most of you…

Enough blabb.  If you are unfamiliar, allow me to introduce you to the fun of BigHugeLabs as one last cheesy nugget of 2008.  Not only is this site a potentially fun time-waster, it can also be a valuable relationship-builder in the hands of the enlightened.  In fact, it can also be a “Christmas gift creation tool”  -if you have both the images and the verbal initiative to pull it off.  I say that with utmost cockiness after having delivered these two gems (framed) as Christmas gifts for my parents.  Toss in the birth of their newest granddaughter and you have the makings of a sweet little gift.  Seriously, would you not prominently display these?  Also-  have I yet mentioned how amazing my parents are?  They are.  To me, these images immortalize that fact.

I have used the BHLabs website in the past.  In the past five months, I shot the first two weddings of my life.  The fact that a good friend from graduate school and then her friend trusted me with their wedding day photography was…  frightening.  Conclusions?  I doubt I can even be a wedding photographer on the side.  Why?  1) Way too much stresss.  2)  I hate weddings.  (to clarify: marriage is treating me splendidly.  weddings are just most generally not a guy’s thing)  A million other moments are more important throughout the course of a life, and few hire a photographer for those.

Sad.

That said, I used BigHugeLabs to add a sheen of fun to the disk of images delivered to my two new brides.  Whether highlighting the beauty of a bride in splendid excess, or laughing at a groom as sex symbol, all is great fun.  Whether it is the “motivator” tool, or one of the other “you don’t eeeeven need Photoshop for this” -style images, you will almost always find something fun and fitting.  I mean, hey-  not everyone loves me…  but foreign leaders somehow seem to.  Well, foreign leaders and models.

All of these images, as well as 95% of those I post on this blog to both highlight the ideas I am selling or to celebrate the work of amateur artists (usually both), are hosted on my Flickr site.  Flickr is currently the place to store your photos online.  At one time, I housed hundreds of photos at the now-defunct Clubphoto.  One fun day a couple of years ago, management walked into the offices and told folks to pack up their **it and *it.  I, of course, had backups of all images on my hard drives.  What I didn’t have were the countless hours of captions (lengthy explanations) I had invested in each image for many years.  I once used these as educational blurbs for my students, and especially for the parent of my students  -and prospective students of a very unusual and expensive class (for public school).

Happy New Year to you all.  May you find a thousand photographable moments headed your way in 2009.  By the way-  this marks the ninth year I have been disappointed by the “F” volume of the World Book encyclopedia from my sixth grade year.  I remember that future entry which showed transportation in the year 2000 to prominently feature svelte little rocket cars zipping about to-and-fro a la George Jetson.

Oh well.  You can’t win ‘em all, right?  Right??

I am such a sucker for anything that even slightly tickles the visual and verbal parts of my brain simultaneously. To start, I love this lesson plan that deals with defining poetry. I would love to take part in a discussion like this… shoot… any discussion like this. I need my fix of a good, solid social science or literature debate. Anyone feel like inviting me in for one?

In fact, a nice little set of lesson plans concerning poetry are found on the site. As you look through, you will see that the self-label of “advanced” might just fit. But I think many of these are more than feasible in our school. We have students at Benton who are more than capable of learning from this.

The main website is called “PicLits.” The tagline for PicLits is “inspired picture writing.” To me, this is an interesting little site that appears to be a weird mashup: part visual literacy, part refrigerator poetry, part… fun. The main site itself, doesn’t come across as allowing much heavy-lifting relating to typical communication arts instruction. However, it isn’t the site, but what you do with it that counts. Right? To me, this site is about greasing the wheels of inspiration. I can almost guarantee that an approach like this would have gone a long way toward allowing me to feel empowered to connect to poetic verse at a younger age. I was too cool for this in high school. In college, I became enthralled. Don’t you ever wonder what would have happened if you had learned something really amazing… but a year or two earlier?

Perhaps I connected to this site because it reminds me of some of the goofy things I used to do with Photoshop years ago. To me, so many of my photos just begged for words. I had fun slapping them onto images from time to time.

Perhaps this is a fun little site that would work (as Michael Gier mentioned in a discussion here) in a CA classroom to enhance a lesson that ends with “time to spare.”

Just trolling through the site a bit, I found an image that stood out to me as interesting. It seemed to beg for a poetic caption. There are two ways in which this text can be added. There is a link to add words to the image via “drag & drop” (the refrigerator poetry way), or via the “freestyle” method, which simply allows you to type onto the image as you wish.

My little sixty-second creation is here:

See the full PicLit at PicLits.com

Click to go to the site and check it out, and hey… feedback is powerful. Throw in a comment. Make me feel like a poet. If I like the experience, perhaps I will be inspired to publish again in perhaps even another way. Get it? If you do get it, then you are already beginning the feel the power of the interactive web. Feels good, doesn’t it?

***Sorry, I couldn’t resist. I had to make just one more before getting on with the four other things I am currently juggling:

See the full PicLit at PicLits.com

Anyone else feel like playing along?