By Cameron Wyenberg
There is a... habit (let's call it that) I sometimes fall into, a habit that can be pretty prevalent in learning settings. It probably has something to do with the emphasis on reading and writing in academic settings, but also the novelty of the internet as a form of knowledge sharing. Sure, the internet may not seem so novel these days, but compared to printed text as the medium for spreading knowledge, it is just getting started.
Anyway, this habit is to tell, and tell, and tell (or write and write and write), and to forget to show. There are of course the adages like, "a picture is worth a thousand words" or "a director should show, not tell" that would imply the showing can supplant the telling, but I think the best thing is to show and tell. Because while a picture may be worth a thousand words, we don't always know what those words are. We may think we're properly showing, but it turns out we're just confusing the audience. Inversely, there is sometimes the unspoken idea that telling has an exactness of meaning, that there is no chance the audience would be confused by what we are trying to say.
I don't believe showing and telling completely removes any ambiguity, confusion, or misinterpretation, but I do think showing and telling can give a fuller picture since it uses multiple parts of the human ability to take in information and learn from it. Yet, there is also missing the doing aspect, which is a whole other aspect missing from learning experiences. But the purpose of this was to remind myself that showing is an important part of learning that I need to intentionally include.
Tangent: It is funny to think about the fact that even in telling through text (that is, writing a bunch of words to try to convey something), the use of formatting is a form of showing. I can use different type fonts to bring emphasis to a word that you can only pick up by seeing them written differently, whereas a sentence with no special formatting implies nothing to be emphasized. So even if we never include images/charts/etc., by simply playing with some formatting, we are able to show some meaning through these words.
I also chuckle at the idea that a 200 page book of pure text could be considered more academic/erudite than a 50 page book with a mix of images and text. There are pages of text that can be summarized in a half-page picture. I think in academia we are never trained to make use of our visual communication skill, to find ways to say something with an image or drawing. How insightful is it that the academic could be easily pictured as a bespectacled man (much like this likely AI rendition of an "academic person"). He seems "athletic", primed to use his arms and hands to read and write over prolonged periods, yet his eyes need help taking in more than simple text.
Hey Cam! Don't forget to show and tell!