(A Review of Timothy Gangwer’s Whole Brain Visual Thinking)

You can bet that this translates to 65% of your students being visual learners. This is a method of education that is generally overlooked. It is unfortunate, especially when the mind processes visual information 60,000 times faster than text.

Timothy Gangwer’s definition of Whole Brain Visual Thinking, has three aspects to it.

  1. Educators: Specifically those who will embrace and model visual literacy.
  2. Thinking outside the box: Jumping on and off the beaten path to explore various areas.
  3. Technology: This is changing every day.

Mr. Gangwer is co-founder of Visual Teaching Alliance, bringing unique instructional approaches, “out-of-the-box” classroom strategies and up-to-date technology to the field of education.  His organization has equipped over 280,000 teachers nationally and internationally.

Apply the Socratic Method to
implement whole brain visual learning

Socratic Teaching simply involves continuous dialogue between the teacher (mentor) and students. “The days of “I talk and you listen” in a classroom are gone!”

According to Mr. Gangwer, a Socratic teacher puts students “in a position to discover the truth and not have it delivered into their hands.”

  • This facilitates whole brain learning through both deductive and inductive reasoning.
  • Through this method, learners exercise BOTH hemispheres of their brain.

Rather than teaching students WHAT to think, as in conventional classrooms, Mr. Gangwer talks about the importance of teaching students HOW to think. You can do this by teaching critical thinking skills and using visual references in abstract thinking. When you do this, several things happen:

  1. It improves critical thinking and analytical abilities
  2. Promotes divergent thinking
  3. Instills in a student a sense of self confidence and self worth
  4. Improves rational thinking
  5. Increases cognitive skills
  6. Improves communication skills
  7. Students gain proficiency in recognizing pattern

Neural pathways are footpaths in the brain that build bridges between one experience or picture, to another

In other words, they can connect one hemisphere of the brain to the other. But how can we facilitate this connection?

  1. Teach visual representation.
  2. Construct mind maps
  3. Use graphic, relational, classification, and sequential organizers.

Learn more when you get the course

The complete course has a more in depth look at all these methods and strategies for whole brain learning. Not only will you receive all this information, you’ll also get all the literary and technological resources he mentions in this edifying presentation.

If you would like to purchase this entire course, click here to go the course page, or call TAGT Learning On-Demand if you prefer to speak to someone: 512-677-9097.

You can also try it FREE by taking the free trial for teachers!