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Envisioning Learning
Useful and insightful paper by Jay Cross of Internet Time Group exploring the importance of the visual as opposed to the textual.
"It's right before our eyes, but we're so habituated to it that we can't see it. We've confused reading and writing with learning. Most lessons are linear and verbal. Most books do not contain a single illustration. On the web, one highly-regarded but seriously misguided guru maintains a large website on usability (of all things) that contains not one picture. eLearning lessons abound with garish, meaningless clip-art. Schools devote years to teaching students to read and hours on developing their visual intelligence.
In a world that is increasingly concerned with speed, we force learners to read words that they must repeat in their minds in order to decode them and process them associatively. You can grok a picture but not a block of text."