Diagrams in General...

I LOVE Diagrams. Interesting and colorful visual aids make learning much more exciting for me. I am a very kinesthetic and visual person - but reading does not do it for me.

I need numbers, graphs, illustrations, diagrams, dioramas, and models. I need lists too. I constantly make all of these things so that I can learn and keep on top of the things I constantly have to do. I highly recommend you do the same thing. Sticky notes are also powerful stuff.

It was this thought on diagrams and browsing my computer that I remembered some very powerful images that I have not forgotten. Result: Post to blog and ramble about it.

In this post, are a number of images that I thoroughly enjoy.

I want to attack why I enjoy them so much, so that maybe educators can learn a lesson from them and use them to better reach students.

We all know that much of education is not remotely interesting - though in many cases, it is essential. This is especially with younger kids where basic knowledge shapes their understanding of our culture and how to survive in it.

All of the diagrams above non academic. However, I can reasonably recall most aspects of them because they are so diverse and talk about things that I am interested in or care to learn about. Take the colorful blob. It illustrates how all varieties of candy have some very similar themes and characteristics between them. It puts an image to the "candy industry" in a way that helps me determine - now as a marketing major - what kinds of candy are the most popular, what avenues have yet to be explored, and predict the kinds of new "innovations" the candy industry thinks than can create. Like most recently, Snickers is adding peanut butter to their bar.

The baseball diamond explains the metaphor of relating sex to how many "bases" you covered. It, as well as a the other predominantly black and white diagrams come from XKCD.com. He is a genius at mixing things everyone thinks about into quantifiable math and science. He takes fruit and plots its deliciousness with ease of preparation - ie: apples are easy and delicious unlike Coconut or pomegranate. The other ones above include one about Tech support and a frequency search of common terms on google.

There is a chart that describes basic Rock-Paper-Scissor's strategy. Another showing the "cuts" of a Koopa (Bowser - the Antagonist of Mario Brothers). One is a geographic map of the internet as per scale by domain. There are many more facebook users than twitter and so on. There is a guide to finding a video on youtube (when you have nothing else to do) as well as a step by step to dancing Micheal Jackson's Thriller.

I think in diagrams. I work in diagrams. I need diagrams. I feel that creative advertising is being able to justify the outcome producers want from consumers using the logic a consumer would use in buying the said product. If they can prove to me using this same broken down and integrated logic with competitors as to why they are better, then I would be more inclined to buy.

Similarly, if a teacher wanted me to justify what I know based on how I know it or how I correlate my thoughts, I would much prefer structuring a diagram than fighting all the dynamics of writing a 10-15 page paper. Most any college kid can't reason that far and hold a serious tone for a paper while ensuring that it makes sense when it is that long.

Papers are alright and jingles help, but a solid picture means more than any slogan or textbook.