Eight Visual Learning Resources for the Classroom
In the classroom, there are all types of learners. Some students--in many cases most students--learn better visually. Students who read notes on the board or in their notebooks may retain that information better than listening to a lecture.
Visual Learning is a teaching method where ideas, concepts, data and other information are displayed to students through images or other visually-oriented techniques. There are hundreds of websites, apps, and other resources teachers can use in the classroom to help their visual learners succeed.
Here are eight visual learning resources for the classroom.
Websites:
- VisualSpatial.org: At Visual-Spatial, users can find book recommendations and links to websites that cover an array of subjects, such as mathematics, creative thinking, and more. It also offers advice to teachers, such as "10 Tips for Teaching Picture Thinkers" and links to articles written by experts.
- LearningScience.org: Learning Science is a site dedicated to offering teachers and students the best learning tools for science education. The website offers real-time data collection, simuations, interactive web lessons, imagery and more. This is a good resource for visual learners to watch experiments and lessons right before their eyes. All resources and tools are free and cover an array of subjects in science.
- FreeMind: Free Mind is a free online mapping resource for students who need to visually organize their ideas. Users can organize their files, projects, subtasks, Internet-research findings, easy writing and brainstorming, and more. Here, visual learners can also take class notes on Free Mind, so studying for a test or retaining important information is easy.
- Visuwords: This website is an online graphical dictionary where users can look up words to find their meanings and associations with other words and concepts. Users can then connect these words into a diagram to see how they associate with one another. This is a perfect site for visual learners who struggle with writing and English.
Apps
- Brain POP Featured Movies: With Brain POP, students can watch animated movies on a number of subjects, such as science, math, engineering and technology, English, health and more. All of the movies are captioned and it is easy for the user to read along with the movie. The app is free, but with a subscription, students can also take a quiz at the end of each movie to continue their learning.
- ShowMe: This app is good for teachers with visual learners. ShowMe gives users the option to record voice-over whiteboard tutorials and share them online. With unlimited lesson length teachers can import pictures, pause and erase, and easily explain a number of topics to students.
- eReading To Go!: This app promises visual learners that learning to read is fun. Words are voiced and shown on flash cards, a great tool for visual learners. Each flashcard set is followed by a word game, and when they complete the word in a sentence, the word is shown with the previous words they learned.
- Whiteboard HD: A lot like the app ShowMe, Whiteboard HD offers teachers an outlet to share interactive whiteboard-based tutorials as well as giving students the opportunity to write notes, sketch charts, record brainstorming sessions. Users can make freeform drawings, import images and diagrams, and text boxes for organization. For visual learners, this is a great app to stay organized and learn on-the-go.
Article by Kassondra Granata, EducationWorld Contributor