Visual learning

Research has shown that visual learning is one of the best methods for teaching thinking skills. Visual learning techniques - graphical ways of working with ideas and presenting information - teach students to think clearly, and to process, organize and prioritize new information. Visual diagrams reveal patterns, interrelationships and interdependencies. They also stimulate creative thinking.

1. Visual learning techniques help students
   
   1. Clarify thinking
      Students understand how ideas are connected. They see where they have a great deal of passion or information about a topic, making new concepts more thoroughly and easily understood. Students also begin to realize how ideas may be grouped or organized.
   2. Reinforce understanding
      Students recreate, in their own words, what they have learned. This helps them absorb and internalize new information, and gives them ownership of their ideas.
   3. Integrate new knowledge
      Diagrams updated throughout a class prompt students to integrate prior knowledge with new ideas. By reviewing diagrams they've created previously, students see how information fits together.
   4. Identify misconceptions
      Just as a concept map or web will show what students know, misdirected links or wrong connections reveal what they don't understand.
      
      
   Webbing, idea mapping and concept mapping are three of the tools most often employed with visual learning.