Breaking News: I’m a Visual Thinker
The process of creating all three literacy narratives touched on all of the learning outcomes. I accessed the rhetorical composition learning outcome by writing visually and alphabetically. After each narrative was published, I had to think critically about how to improve and focus my story. My narrative is about recognizing writing as a process. By posting three different versions, each with reflections, the project has added six pages to my digital identity. The most meaningful learning outcome I met was in visual thinking. Thinking visually–somewhat ironically–completely changed how I view my writing and thinking process. After writing my first literacy narrative, I had some ideas for what needed improvement and tried to revise the essay before I would have to draw it in comic form. While editing it to shift the focus slightly from outside approval to asking for help, I got stuck and didn’t know what to do. This forced me to map out my comic in a set of bullet points based on what would be the most important aspects to visualize. In doing this, I realized I had missed two key elements that would eventually tie my new theme together. After completing the comic form of my literacy narrative, editing the alphabetic text was by far easier. I was skeptical that drawing out my narrative would have any noticeable impact on my story, but in fact, it was a tremendous help. Thinking visually is a new and helpful tool I can now rely on to focus my work when I get lost in the revision process.
