What is Vark? VARK is a questionnaire that provides users with a profile of their learning preferences. These preferences are about the ways that they want to take-in and give-out information. (www.vark-learn.com)

V - Visual

A- Aural

R-Read/Write

K- Kinesthetic

Yesterday I was invited to come into the classroom and share with them what visual learning means to me.

And so I packed my "Magic Mary Poppins" bag of journals, markers, information graphics, art cards and quilts and headed in to talk about visual learning.

I wanted to share with them that I am a doodler. I have always drawn. I am sure they draw too. It was funny as I started to talk the teacher said, "I want to address the class real quick. I know I just talked with you about doodling and not paying attention in class." She was trying to explain is that you need to doodle for understanding instead of distraction. 

What is doodling? As a visual learner, my pen has to be moving in order for me to be listening. I can not hear if I do not have a pen.

What do I do? Good question. I shared with the students that I draw in front of people big complex business ideas. I draw on the computer for people located around the world so they can "see" what they are talking about. I draw big fancy models with illustrator that are printed out as big posters for companies. I also showed them how I draw for my children. How I take my drawings and routine charts for my kids. How I take a simple drawing and turn it into a quilt. 

Everything about me is visual. It is how I see and communicate with the world. 

I am so grateful to have had the opportunity to talk with these students. When I left the teacher and students had agreed to get some journals for the class and some cups of pens and markers to have out on the desks for them to take their notes. I wish I had been allowed markers in my classroom and I can only say, "AWESOME!! Keep Drawing!!"

America stands at a complex crossroads, economically, technologically, socially and geopolitically. Major forces are reshaping the idea of America, its government’s contract with its citizens, its brand, and its role in the world. And there is not a single global challenge that can be addressed without it.

Zoe Keating performs a unique, soulful "Amazing Grace" | Photo by Kris Klug

The speakers and performers at Pop!Tech this year are examining the questions: Is reinvention possible? What would it look like? Here’s the beginning of this conversation >>

Peter Durand illustrates in real-time a presentation using sumi ink, pastels and acrylic paint.

Alphachimp Studio is on-site in Camden for the 6th year to capture each speaker's vision of an America re-imagined.

View more PopTech art on Flickr >

For afternoon inspiration, check out any of the places their work resides:

http://www.yeehawindustries.com
http://yeehaw.etsy.com
http://www.yeehawindustries.blogspot.com

COME EARLY, STAY LATE! BRING YOUR COUSIN IF YOU CAN'T GET A DATE!
OPENING RECEPTION FOR YEE-HAW EXHIBITION
THIS TUESDAY, OCTOBER 6 from 7-9PM
CHELSEA MARKET
75 9th Avenue (Between 15th and 16th Streets), New York, NY

 

From OCTOBER 4-JANUARY 2, 2009, Yee-Haw's work will adorn the vast and cavernous Chelsea Market, located in the Meat Packing District in Manhattan's West Village. Chelsea Market is an enclosed, urban food court and shopping mall in New York City. It is housed within the former Nabisco factory complex where the Oreo cookie was invented and produced. The 22-building complex fills two entire blocks bound by 9th and 11th Avenues from 15th to 16th Street.
www.chelseamarket.com 

Kaizen (改善) means "improvement" — "kai" (改) means change/make better, and "zen" (善) means good — but as the term is used as a business process it more closely resembles in English “continuous improvement.”

Kaizen is one of the keys to the steady improvement and innovation found at successful companies in Japan such as Toyota. Says Matthew May, in his book The Elegant Solution: Toyota’s Formula for Mastering Innovation, “Kaizen is one of those magical concepts that is at once a philosophy, a principle, a practice, and a tool.”

Though Kaizen is a tool used by corporations to achieve greater innovation, productivity, and general excellence, it’s also an approach, an approach that we can learn from and apply to our own lives as we strive for continuous improvement on a more personal level. We can call this “Personal Kaizen.” Others have applied the personal kaizen approach to personal efficiency or GTD. You too can take the spirit of kaizen and apply it to your own unique personal kaizen approach to improve — step-by-step, little-by-little — your design mindfulness, knowledge, and skill. READ MORE >>

Source: Personal Kaizen: 15 Tips for your continuous improvement (http://www.presentationzen.com/presentationzen/2009/09/personal-kaizen-tips-for-your-continuous-improvement.html) by Garr Reynolds - The interesting thing about kaizen is that big, sudden improvements are not necessary. Instead, what is important is that you’re always looking for ideas — including even the smallest of things — that you can build on. Tiny improvements are OK; over the long-term these add up to great improvements. Each journey begins with a single step — this too is a precept inherent in Kaizen. Keep moving forward.

Minneapolis-based designer Chad Hagen takes our love of infographics and turns our little heart inside out. For these are no aesthetically-plotted data sets full of statistics. In fact, we see no handy information at all, just the colors and shapes that typically make an infographic chart pleasant to examine in the first place.

Source: Chad Hagen's Nonsensical Infographics: BYO Data (http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/kelsey-keith/designage/chad-hagen-nonsensical-infographics-0) by Kelsey Keith

When A.G. Lafley was named CEO of Procter & Gamble during the summer of 2000, her job was remarkably ambitious: Make innovation happen at P&G.

To remain the world's preeminent maker of useful stuff for the house, P&G needed to make a lot of changes very quickly and appointed Claudia Kotchka as the company's first-ever VP for design strategy and innovation in 2002.

Her job was remarkably ambitious: Make innovation happen at P&G!

And she did through up-endeding the status quo in P&G's product development process. She made several bold moves that any company may want to consider.

The brown paper bags that McDonald's hangs out along with Happy Meals and fries are an unlikely art medium, but artist Yuken Teruya has managed to turn the grease-stained vessels into beautiful, delicate paper forests.

"It is a world full of conflicts." notes Jon Stewart in his intro to this report. "Some are more important than others. And some are much, much less."

In the contentious field of science, there are many accepted truths. These two ape scientists duke it out over who is our closest ancestor. Fortunately, The Daily Show correspondent John Oliver is there to conduct an evidence-based debate: Chimps vs. Orangutans.

(A 'must-see' in that you must see the scientist with a mohawk who lacks any capacity for self-deprication or free-style rap skills.)

Source: Humans Closest Relative (http://www.hulu.com/watch/87728/the-daily-show-with-jon-stewart-humans-closest-relative#s-p1-st-i1)

Jimmy Corrigan, The Smartest Kid On Earthis an example of a comic where the art is doing its job.(Random House)

Glen Weldon posts on NPR Arts correspondent Lynn Neary's piece on All Things Considered about the new graphic novel adaptation of Ray Bradbury's classic Fahrenheit 451. He breaks down what's right and what stinks about the last generation of graphic novels, and how the masters of the form make it work.

As part of the Explore Evolution exhibit at the University of Nebraska State Museum, Judy Diamond displays a segment of the human genome in line with that of the chimpanzee that matches very closely. The point is to show how similar two are with the few differences represented by a drawing of a man, distinguished geneticist Svante Paabo.

See video of scintist Richard Dawkins explaining the exhibit.

Source: Comparing the Human and Chimpanzee Genomes (http://flowingdata.com/2009/07/21/comparing-the-human-and-chimpanzee-genomes/) by NATHAN