My Vision

Visual Knowledge Building theory is what a group of people need to accomplish to create knowledge. Ages ago they used to teach with books and traditional learning methods. But nowadays the use of visuals are just as important as words. 
Maybe, they are more important…

Before I started this minor, I didn’t knew the existing of all these theories. Now I know them, and understand them, I see the creating of knowledge in a other way than I just to think. 

Creating knowledge for yourself and the people around me is becoming more important for me. I think If one person know something specific, the whole network should now. For example, I will refer to the second World War. All these times that my grandparents told me all the stories and all the things they’ve been true, I always thought; ‘yeah, right’.  Without knowing, I took it in by brains. I wasn’t there at the time, ofcourse I wasn’t even born yet, and I still can not understand what really happened at that time. But I still have the knowledge of that. The 9/11 part in the USA, is something I have seen with my own eyes (of course on television). When I have children of grandchildren I will pass that knowledge true, the same as my grandparents did with the World War. All these knowledge, out of the history, will never lost.

There is something different in the story I will tell and the story my grandparents told. I can spread the knowledge in an other way because of the digital area we are living in. I can use the computer, show them movies on YouTube, show pictures etc. It will be visual.

This is exactly what Marc Prensky was meaning with the digital natives and the digital immigrants. My grandparents are digital immigrants and I am a digital native. They grew up with the paper and a pencil. They wrote things down, had black/white pictures and I grew up with the PC. Children, who were born the last view years, grew up with the smartphones. They easily can use them and navigate themselves to applications to play a game for example. It’s easy for them to help themselves because of the visuals. They recognize the pictures they see.

I think that the way of learning has changed. As I already explained, we have now two groups, the digital immigrants and the digital natives. I want to refer to Marc Prensky. He created the Prensky’s learning styles. These styles show the differences between the learning methods of the digital natives and digital immigrants.

The traditional way of learning, with only a teacher and books is outdated. To my opinion blended learning is the best learning approach. This is combination of e-learning and the traditional learning makes it easier to follow the lessons. You can follow the lessons at home but also have the ability to go to the lessons and ask questions in real life. It makes our life easier and more comfortable. But e-learning does have a the disadvantage. The interaction between human is becoming less, but we see that it is very important. This is related to the constructivism, but I’ll tell you more about it later in my vision. I think human interaction is very important when you want to learn. It’s something I notice myself. The minor of VKB is not easy to understand. By just reading the powerpoint presentations, you will not understand. I stopped reading them as preparation for the lessons. Just because it was too hard without having the good theories. After the explanations of the teachers, it was easier to understand.

The other disadvantage I think is important, is the way of interpretation. There could be a differences of interpretation. You can’t see in a E-learning environment how you have to see things or how to think about it. Every single person can read it but they could interpret it in a different way. What is good and what is wrong? The related thing in here is the difference in culture. You have to support this issue with blended learning.

For example:

People like to eat beefsteak because it’s normal to eat it. It also can be a holy animal in their culture. There will be a difference of interpretation.

Senses

When you use all your five senses you will learn how to develop your framework and build it up. So you use your senses to build your visual knowledge. If you touch, see, hear, feel or smell something you can link it to an image. Visual knowledge building is very important now, but more important to the future I think.

Connectivism and Constructivism

Before starting this minor, I had never heard about these terms. Now I have the knowledge and understanding of these terms, I think we have to create the knowledge of existing of the terms themselves. Without knowing we connect in our brains the knowledge we create (connectivism). Also without knowing, we construct new knowledge in our brains and come up with new ideas. But the most important thing is the way we can get to the knowledge. Through this minor, it became more clear for me, that there is a small group of teachers that are creating knowledge by students in a good way. We should create knowledge with each other, with the whole group, and not by listening to the teacher for 1,5 hour and after that nobody knows what the teacher told. By creating knowledge with each other, your framework will grow and grow.

You will never learn anything for absolutely scratch. Someone can have a new idea, it’s related to something that already exist in your brain. You will start up with the new idea next to the old idea and this will carry on (constructivism). Of course this is always subjective. We all take the same information and add it to a part of our brain but we never hear exactly the same thing.

VC

Visual Communication is a very important thing. Without knowing we learn to get along with semiotics (the study of signs, Daniel Chandler). Graphics are very usefully for communication as they are more illustrative than text. Graphics can contain more complex information than text in highly compressed form. For example when you are on the highway.  I think in our country, people are skilled enough to understand al the meanings (semantics) of visuals. There are countries where they are less skilled, so when they go to another country they might have a problem with understanding visuals and understand syntactics.

I think the most important thing for VKB and VC is the combination of text and visual. That is why the semiotics are so important. Before I started this minor I had never heard about semiotics. After the teachers explain what is was, you understand that it contain something with signs. In the course with Simon Palser about the different signs as I illustrate on the page of Visual Communication, you think it is completely normal that you understand and have knowledge what these signs means.

I think the digital area is a very positive area for creating knowledge because of the visuals. People are more interested in subjects because of the visuals. Just text doesn't do the same with people. Of they just read the text and can't make it visual or think it's to difficult they will stop and are not interesting. I think the visuals creating more binding with a subject.

To conclude my vision, I think it is necessary to use visuals to create the best and fastes knowledge. It will make people understand it’s better and faster and create more interest. Because of the many options to create knowledge without any subject, it would be already create more interest.