Images and metaphors

The use of images as a catalyst for reflective learning has come up again. Why does this wonderful technique so often get forgotten?

I want to copy my forum post here before I forget about this topic - and add a bit to it.

'I too like using pictures. What is it they say? A single picture can speak a thousand words.

Last year (or maybe it was the year before - time passes so quickly!)

I went to a digital storytelling workshop. Jenny Moon had an input there too. Basically we were looking at using images and the affordances of technology to tell stories that would enable us to reflect on an event. This is a link to one that I particularly liked (Scissors) http://www.photobus.co.uk/index.php?id=2&movie=scissors.flv

Quite a few people at the workshop were asking their students to do this, particularly if they were on photography type courses, but it wasn't restricted to particular disciplines.'

Looking back I really enjoyed the workshop and everyone there was very enthusiastic, but I thought it was a very time consuming method for students. If I wanted my students to reflect using technology, I'd probably ask them to blog - but even having said that - I think students should be allowed to choose their own formats for reflection. This is one of the problems with lesson evaluations for trainee teachers. They very often have to be completed on a given proforma - to make life easy for the assessors. I remember one brilliant and creative trainee teacher not completing them and being in danger of not passing his final placement because of this. He said the form did not enable him to engage with the reflective process in a way that was beneficial to him. We dsigned a new form together to meet his needs and then he was fine! Students not only jump through hoops of their own volition, but sometimes we also make them jump through hoops.

The forum discussion also reminded me that we talked quite a bit about metaphors for reflection on the last course and that at the end of the course I pulled together all the metaphors they had suggested into one pictorial representation - the one above. I'd forgotten all about this!

The images come from these sites:

http://staff.howard.k12.md.us/~gtralka/images/macdonald_xspot_1_aux_img2.jpg
http://www.tonyrogers.com/weapons/images/high_speed_photos/webready/22_bullet_a.jpg
http://www.changezone.co.uk/Hero.jpg
frielp: http://www.flickr.com/photos/frielp/53033086/
gbenard: http://www.flickr.com/photos/gbentenza/1406552423/
cayusa:http://www.flickr.com/photos/cayusa/525825907/http://www.patrickjohnmills.com/snail34.jpg