Project+2+Visual+Mapping+on+Social+Media

Introduction
==== Visual mapping is great way to represent relationships among multiple ideas. There are many diverse learners in society and in our world today. Some people find it easier to learn by hearing or by doing, while visual mapping focuses on the learner that has visual learning preferences. The visual learner learns best by seeing the relationships rather than listening to a lecture. ====

====When I began teaching special education only 10 years ago, special education teachers were given hard-copy worksheets of graphic organizers, a visual mapping tool, to help special education students with visual strengths, learn on the same level as the regular education students. Rapidly changing technology has enabled teachers and students to quickly develop custom visual maps or graphic organizers without requiring much artistic ability. ====

====This reflection will explain the challenges that I faced throughout the development of three visual maps on social media. The first visual map was done the old-fashioned way, with paper and colored markers. The second and third visual maps were completed with the use of two different web 2.0 tools. Both of these web 2.0 tools, Spicynodes and Prezi, are interactive and they both have sharing features that allow users to collaborate on projects. ====

Hand-drawn Visual Map
 I have been trained to believe that sketching any visual ideas on paper, the old-fashioned way, is the best way to begin any project. The hand-drawn visual map below is actually the final draft of a rough draft that I had produced to help me visualize the connections that need to be made before turning the map into a color, non-erasable version. Hand-drawn visual maps still have their place in learning. Computers are not always accessible for every student in a class and they can be used as a quick assessment of student learning.

I seemed to have really labored with the development of visual connections from my social media resources. All of the social media resources that I reviewed had some link to informal learning, so I wanted to try to visually define the differences between both formal and informal learning. Informal learning, or the learning that takes place through our social connections seemed to be the foundation of our social structure. Most of the information that we store in our brains got there through informal learning. As a matter of fact 19% of all learning takes place in formal school from 1st grade to 12th grade. That means that 81% of our learning is accomplished through our personal, social connections (Fewkes, A. M., & McCabe, M., 2012). I chose to use red connectors for the formal learning structure and blue connectors to represent the informal learning structure and supports. You may notice that informal and formal learning have a connection in a couple of places. Problem solving is common between the two because I felt that it requires some formal instruction, but of course most of problem solving does take place outside the classroom. The fears that are shared by teachers, administrators, and parents are very real and connect social media to formal education.



Spicynodes
 Spicynodes was very easy to start using. The templates made my visual map very simple to build because all I needed to do was place the text from my sketch and drop a picture that I had collected from the Internet. Its customizability left more to be desired. The free version was very basic and I did not want to pay a monthly or annual fee to see what other features Spicynodes had to offer. I got a little frustrated when previewing my visual map because it was very difficult to move the node around the way I wanted. The node view would not cooperate with the way I wanted to view the visual map.

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Prezi
 Prezi was by far the easy way to accomplish creating my social media visual map. Prezi is easy to customize too. I actually began with a template and then added to the template to customize the visual layout even more. Prezi locks graphics and centers them for you. The tools in Prezi are very easy to use and it took no time to become proficient. The coolest thing about Prezi is that it has picture search tool that will search through Google Images to make graphic selection and placing very simple. There is no need to search in Google, save images, and then bring them in later. Prezi delivered a knock-out punch to Spicynodes.

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Conclusion
 Visual maps can help me relay important information to my students that have visual strengths. Creating visual maps can help connect the dots for struggling learners. I think I can even teach students how to create their own visual maps using Prezi as a study skills strategy. Visual maps will help all students summarize large amounts of information and break that information down in more manageable parts.

About the Author

 * [[image:jameytrask7465/jamey head crop.jpg]] || =====James Trask or "Jamey" is a special education teacher at Fayette County High School, in Fayetteville, GA. He has been teaching and coaching varsity football there for the past 9 years. This year he also accepted a part-time position as a teacher for the Georgia Virtual School. Jamey is currently teaching one engineering course through the GA Virtual School. Teaching online has been a great challenge for Jamey and he is glad to have been given this opportunity to be on the front-end of a movement toward online education. Jamey received his undergraduate degree from Georgia Southern University in graphic design. He completed his masters degree in Instructional Technology from the University of West Georgia in the spring of 2012. Jamey spends most of his professional time co-teaching math, but he also co-teaches a British Literature course. Jamey always looks for opportunities to use and share the knowledge he has in graphic design and technology with others that will listen. ===== ||