Visualizing Technologies

On a bright Spring day at Texas A&M University -  Commerce, I sat down to listen to a lecture about Shakespeare’s Othello in my freshmen-level English course. Shortly after the class began the teacher pulled down a screen and started showing maps online to show where the play was supposed to take place. However, instead of a short two minute (if that!) showing of the map, she spent over fifteen minutes doing her best to help us visualize the area with maps and images that, in the end, contributed nothing to my understanding of the play. A picture is worth a thousand words, and her words were all useless.

When using visualization technology, it is imperative that instructors make sure that the images are increasing the students’ understanding of the topic. For courses like math and science, visual aids are imperative to student understanding. Graphic visuals and models can help students understand complex ideas and organize their information. In courses like literature, video clips of plays are highly important to students’ understanding on how to read works like Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman. Most students won’t be able to understand the stage directions and the small nuances that drastically change the meaning of the text. Through the use of visual technologies, these students will now be able to better understand the text and their appreciation for literature will hopefully increase.