The role of graphics in education has changed – it has become a lot more crucial than ever before.
We at InnerDrive loved Organise Ideas: thinking by Hand, extending the Mind, and you can read why in our full review. The book describes in terrific detail how choosing and creating the ideal word diagrams can affect how much information students understand and remember, but we still had a few questions.
We were lucky to have the opportunity to ask them to authors Oliver Caviglioli and David Goodwin. In this Q&A, we learn about what motivated them to write this book, concepts and ideas that they refer to, and recommendations for teachers about using word diagrams…
Book Studying With The brain In Mind student Workshop
InnerDrive: could you summarise what your book, Organise Ideas, is about, and Camiseta Everton FC what inspired you to write it? Why do you think it’s important?
David: The book is about what people generally know as being graphic organisers. We’re using the term “word diagrams” because we want to distance ourselves from the idea that graphic organisers are pictorial representations. It’s their spatial arrangements that unlock meaning. We were keen to address the lots of different issues around the terminology that’s used with them, and the contradictions in a lot of the research as to why word diagrams work, or in some cases don’t work. I personally really wanted to change the narrative around how they are used. We would see lots of wonderful examples of these graphic organisers, but what I wasn’t seeing, frustratingly, was how people use them and what do they make with them. In this book, we talk about the purpose of these organisers. They are tools that serve the learning process. It’s how we unlock the full potential of them and how we show students to organise their knowledge in service of extended writing and conversations between students. before this book, there was no framework, theory or buy to graphic organisers. The ironic thing was that the graphic organisers hadn’t been organised.
InnerDrive: I hadn’t heard the phrase “word diagram” before. Did you coin that term yourselves?
Oliver: Yes. There are so lots of other terms for them like visual tools, semantic organisers, semantic network, they’re endless. Traditionally, they’ve all been accounted for by dual coding theory; which is that we have two channels, one for words and one for non-words. but what makes graphic organiser effective? The answer is words, not visuals. When you take a look at what people say, often there’s no buy to it. They speak in substantial vocabulary and metaphors. With word diagrams, you’re not using any syntax, grammar, rich vocabulary, or any other linguistic feature that normally impresses people. Word diagrams answer the question “what are they really saying?”
InnerDrive: What questions must teachers be contemplating when deciding which graphic organiser would best fit the purpose of the content? and how must they go about using them?
Oliver: What you must be doing first of all is understanding the perspective with which you are interrogating the text. Fundamentally, you are trying to find 4 things, separately, together or as a hybrid. Camiseta Selección de fútbol de Países Bajos Ask yourself if you’re defining something, comparing something, sequencing something temporally or showing cause and effect. As a teacher, you will be far a lot more effective if you know the structure of the information you’re about to explain.
InnerDrive: If there are only 4 types of graphic organisers, why do regular people and a lot of educators not know about them? What have been the barriers?
Oliver: education has been filled with too lots of creative people who are really terrific with syntax and vocabulary. They tell a good story, but they don’t get down to the basics. It’s as if people hate that type of thinking. people are also quick to say that graphic organisers are reductionist, because they like the story telling. no one is checking out what the knowledge actually is and how it’s structured. Instead, we congratulate each other over how philosophical and grandiose we’ve been in our statements.
InnerDrive: In the book, you talk a lot about spatial arrangement. Why is this so crucial when deciding how to use a graphic organiser?
David: I think that the diagram that best illustrates the idea of spatial arrangement is the double-spray organiser. In a double-spray, the ideas in the centre have the most in common. The ideas on the outside of the diagram are what we consider to be a lot of different. When we think about things that are closer together, we think that they’re similar in some way. That really encapsulates spatial arrangement. We talk in the book about spatial metaphors, metaphors that use space as their domain, and how we use them to Camiseta Selección de fútbol de Serbia communicate abstract ideas and thoughts. For example, “hand over what you know”, “I can’t grasp this concept”, “put your ideas innull