Colour As a Learning Tool »
I had an interesting conversation about colourfeed with someone who has a specific form of dyslexia. She took a liking to my poster and intrigued me about how schools cater for learning disabilities by using creative methods. Often this is through the use of colour. In her specific case, everything needs to be tinted in blue for her to be able to read the sentence without displacing words.
It got me thinking about how it is that this colour method works. Is it a way of tricking the brain by re-contextualising material? I will concede to being completely ignorant about cognitive disability, but I believe I am not too misguided in saying it is, at simplest, a deviation from perceptual convention – hence the specific colour-coded learning tools which would not be otherwise readily available.
But why are these tools (and I do not mean just the glasses) not readily available? As aforementioned, learning is currently a rather exclusive process which does not usually implement tailored or creative methods in teaching. Could colour in teaching appeal to both those with learning difficulties and those without alike? Could colour could be used to simplify more complex material and make it accessible in all types of learning? Could colour be used in numbers and languages in the average classroom, or even outside it?
To answer these questions I have written a brief. I am not willing to disclose the details just yet as I am still in the preliminary stages (I have only just decided whether research is feasible or not) but in any case I would love to hear about anyone who has something to say about learning disabilities or colour as a learning tool.
I was really happy to follow your comment back and find a blog that actually had some conceptual meat to it. I think your ideas with colourfeed are great, and may be something you could pitch to google, the new microsoft search engine, or any of the others. I find it so hard to sift through all of the drivel on the internet some days, often feeling like no matter what search term I enter, from yam to bicycle, everything comes up with porn (which is pretty scary when you consider the implications!). I think if we can do anything to make the internet/world more manageable, we should.
I think I can picture bicycle porn (something I probably glanced on my trip to Amsterdam) but I am drawing a blank on yams. And I am infinitely glad for it. Also, thanks for the positive feedback on colourfeed :) I do like the idea of making information manageable, which is probably why I am the sort of designer I am (a nerdy, wordy one)!
I think it’s wrong of people (teachers? I’m thinking the decision-makers are higher up) to assume that just because we grow up learning has to (often become) mundane and straightforward. We could benefit from variety at any age and colours are a good way of segregating different areas of learning, paragraphs and facts etc, as well as assisting recalling information later due to associating it with a colour. I’ve heard of colours being used a bit, like you say for text, but otherwise just that time given for work for people with dyslexia is longer. I never saw that helping though as the people I knew with dyslexia couldn’t read very well and no amount of time helped that.
To answer your question why aren’t these tools readily available – it takes someone to question, like yourself, for things to happen.
You are quite right about colour being an excellent memory tool. I never really thought about it, but I use colour in all my writing and notes so I can discern dates, sections and subject matter. Maybe after giving it some thought I think most of us would find we already use colour in some way to assist our way of learning!
I have also never really understood how added time actually helps. It is something I will have to research, as I have known cases from both extremes i.e. either very helpful or not so.