Visual Thinkery stories and cartoons

Author: Bryan Mathers

  • The long burn

    The long burn

    A cracker of an idea. A business idea. I should start a business with this idea right now. Figure it out in my spare time and then just set it up…

    For me, startup never happens like this.

    It starts with a hunch, a curiosity, almost an irritation. So much uncertainty. So many unknowns. It’s half-baked plan hinges on finding good people and figuring out how to keep them.

    There’s a model that’s often peddled – multiple rounds of external funding with the hook of the big exit that’ll make everyone rich. And it makes sense – if you’re an investor. But I’m not comfortable with it, for every external investment is a big chain pulling you away from the “why” of your business. I don’t start businesses to make money. I start businesses to change the world or at least a few people’s world…

    It’s a long burn.

  • To create is to notice

    To create is to notice

    Let there be light! And there was light, and it created a really interesting shadow…

    The skill of noticing detail’s. Like any embedded skill, it takes a lot of practise. It’s like a teacher and a badly placed apostrophe (hee hee!) – it jumps out of the text and hits you on the head – but it’s merely a little divot in a sentence.

    The visual thinkery I’ve created changed radically when I started noticing highlights and shadows; it’s all about what the light is doing.

    Maybe to create is to notice.

  • This is my own hand

    This is my own hand

    Listen… aha! There’s one! But what does it look like? Why are they saying that? Just start drawing – let’s see what shapes my pen creates, and go with it…

    Some of my earliest visual thoughts come from keynotes at education-related conferences. I would try to zone in and capture just one thought the speaker was trying to illuminate. Then sketch, create and tweet the image before the speaker has finished. So it made sense to experiment with creating a font of my own hand, dipping my tow in the ocean of Typography…

  • Fixed Mindsets

    Fixed Mindsets

    I recently tripped over one of my fixed mindsets. A what could I possibly do that would make any difference to this? sort of mindset. It was ugly. Choose your battles I had told myself, but I’m in real danger of never pitching up for a fight.

    Fixed mindsets. In my experience, these are easier to spot in others when you rub up against them (the mindsets that is…) but a lot more difficult to spot in your own self.

    Beware…

  • Tests – Big in Education…

    Tests – Big in Education…

    A few years ago, I completed a MOOC (massive open online course) on the Science of Everyday Thinking. I really enjoyed it. I tried to put my finger on what it was that helped me stay the distance. I liked the bite-sized nature of it. The videos were punchy and conversational. The edX platform was comfortable. Then it dawned on me. This was the first formal learning experience I’d had where I wasn’t doing it for the credential – but out of interest…

  • Understanding dyslexia: the reading circuit

    Understanding dyslexia: the reading circuit

    The idea of the “reading circuit” really helped me understand dyslexia a bit better. Fluency takes effort.

    I’ve always been a slow reader. I didn’t really ever enjoy it. Turns out it’s not the actual material, as in the last decade, I’ve listened to a grillion (not quite as much as a bijillion but more than a bazillion…) audiobooks. Everything from Dostoyevsky to Vonnegut.

    There must be a tipping point where the effort required is less than the reward gained from the read? For me, that tipping point didn’t come until my late teens yet my two eldest children are already there. Brain-food. Yum!…

  • Radical Pedagogy

    Radical Pedagogy

    My wife is my signpost – for some things, anyway. She reads faster than me and tells me of books that I might like. I have but one requirement: at the end of the book, I want to be able to say “I’ve never read anything like that before”. As a result, I’ve been enjoying some Italo Calvino recently (no, I hadn’t heard of him either, but I’ve never read anything like it before…).

    So how come all this Radical Pedagogy then Bryan? Well, this same wife is currently wading though a PGCE in her spare time, and asked if I’d create some slides for a presentation on Paolo Freire. The more I understand of his thinkery, the more I like him…

     

  • Subject – Verb – Object

    Subject – Verb – Object

    As a kid in a classroom, I didn’t question it. I took what was laid before me, in the environment in which it was given. I was taught. I found it difficult to ask questions, as it revealed a lack of knowledge or understanding. The game was one of “how much do you know?“, maintaining our pecking order of perceived smartness. However, there were some teachers who came down to my level and transparently learned alongside me. It was different. They were different. The game was different: “where can we go today?“

  • Monologue and Dialogue

    Monologue and Dialogue

    The lecture.
    At home, at school, and at church.
    I’ve had so many,
    but can recall very few…

    The group.
    At home, at school, and at church.
    Articulating something half-baked,
    in order to put it back in the oven and turn up the heat…

  • Bank of Education

    Bank of Education

    ALGAE… ASTEROID… ATOM… ah. No ATILLA THE HUN…
    Being in my kids room shortly before bedtime, and having momentarily confused Atilla with Genghis Khan (they won’t be happy), I instinctively reached for a handy volume from a colourful set of encyclopaedias. My search was fruitless. In the olden days, knowledge existed hidden away in pockets, which was fine if you knew which pocket and had the means to access it. However, one must not treat an encyclopaedia like wikipedia, for they offer two subtly different entry-points to learning: interest-led vs prescribed. By the way, are our schools more like encyclopaedias or wikis?

  • An engineering state of mind

    An engineering state of mind

    Shed. Check. Swiss Army Knife. Check. Soldering Iron. Check. Raspberry Pi and associated bits. Check. Motto: to solve problems and to find problems that need solving. Check…

    When I was at University, the word “engineer” had some odd connotations in my head. Geeky, sterile, boring. It seemed so theoretical, so mathematical. I thought that engineers became engineers by doing an engineering degree at University.

    Since those days, I’ve met engineers who have never been near a University. They are defined by a way of thinking – a spirit of engineering, if you will…

    A came across this lovely Scott Adams (creator of Dilbert) quote here: Thinking like an Engineer.

  • Those cubes

    Those cubes

    So I stare at a blank page and draw a brightly coloured cube. BUILD SOMETHING WITH ME it says, sitting there in it’s bold primary colours. TESSELLATE ME. I wonder about the light, and were the shadows might be. If the shadows were irregular, how would that feel? It feels to me like pixels on a curved surface, or the light sensitive sensors on the back of my retina…

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