A couple of weeks ago I picked up Dan Roam’s Unfolding the Napkin (affiliate link) which contains some great ideas for using pictures and visual thinking to identify and solve problems. I actually used some of his ideas while planning my Reform Symposium presentation on using backchannels in the classroom. This evening while exploring Roam’s website I discovered a video of his SXSW presentation in which he gave an overview of the history of visual thinking and what visual thinking really means.

SXSW 2010: Dan Roam on Visual Thinking from Teehan+Lax on Vimeo.

Applications for Education
Roam works primarily with businesses, but the ideas he employs can be applied to planning and designing lessons and presentations for education. If you have a chance, I recommend borrowing one or both of his books from your local library.