This article tackles the relationship between visualization and the meaning it indicates. For example, Ngram is a helpful tool that was invented to tell the relationship between words in many books through statistics. The purpose of such tools is similar to other ones, such as Voyant, that provide statistics for visualization online. The former gives the approximate number of words and how many times they are repeated in a collection of books. The novelty of these programs makes them more educational because of exploiting colors and because of the component of other tools that they engage. This sometimes has undesired educational results because engaging many colors and moving pictures distract students’ attention from the content. Kelly anticipates something similar to that when he says: “I will leave it to the literary scholars and the linguists to hash out the thornier issues here”. He should address the psychologists as well.
Again, pedagogy that deeply relies on colors, motion pictures, and texts as games attract students for better learning and understanding when approaching information, using these programs. Nevertheless, there is a fear that the excessive use of that colorful texts or games attract students’ attention toward the means more than the content. That should be taken into the consideration of educators when launching their programs. They need to be moderate when dealing with these facts. So students have the chance to exploit these programs in the right way as intended when they were launched initially.
The big bulk of Kelly’s article deals with the positive aspects of the visualization information. He describes perfect experiences when engaging this technology inside classes and online; that really forms virtual environment of learning-teaching process even though students do not need to be in the classroom. Distance learning is significant nowadays in which students can communicate and interact easily from many different places. Equally important, Kelly refers to the graphs and their importance in providing facts about words and books online. So he refers to the importance of education through using the phrase, “technical discussion”. That is because they provide exact information, not speculation, on a scientific basis and employs technology in pedagogy.
I like the way you started thinking about connecting different digital tools with each other and seeing similarities between them; which actually facilitate the process of teaching. When we, as future educators, think about them and try to apply them in the learning-teaching process in the best way there is, we actually take this process to new levels where desired results are met.
Nouf, that is true. You think about the desired results for both teachers and students. The successful teaching process has impact on both students and teachers as well.