Bikablo® is making its mark in schools
Today we have some very special guests: the team from bikablo® macht Schule (bikablo® Makes School) is visiting Neuland. And since we have such guests, we naturally take the opportunity to ask them a few questions, especially about such an interesting topic. We hope you enjoy the interview with Sandra, Silvia, Christian, Frank, and Karl about their bikablo macht Schule project! 🙂
Tell us. What is your project about?
Frank : As educators, we have made it our mission to promote visualization as a teaching and learning method in schools. Education and learning become truly enjoyable, more individualized, communicative, emotional, and sustainable this way. Making learning visible creates clarity and orientation; complexity becomes more comprehensible, communicable, and easier to explore in depth. The progressive educational ideal of being able to design learning processes holistically (with head, heart, and hands) and individually is finally becoming a reality (and is absolutely essential in the digital age).
Silvia : Our training provides a tool to filter, organize, prioritize, and hierarchize the vast amount of information that floods in on us every day – adults and teenagers – in texts and YouTube videos, for example.
And how did you come up with that?
Frank : As an art teacher, I've always been a committed visual learner. Images and education are closely linked. Karina, my former and best teacher, exemplified this visual thinking for me in art classes and at school. In my role as a media consultant, I decided I absolutely wanted to explain the abstract and digital world in a genuinely analog way. This decision naturally led me to the experts in visual thinking: back to Karina.
Sandra and Silvia : And that's how Karl and the two of us came into the picture. After participating in a visualization training course, we too had begun to integrate visual thinking into our work at school and in our professional seminars.
That sounds really exciting. What would you say is your vision behind it?
Sandra : I think the statement “A resource-poor country like Germany needs lateral thinkers” (from: “Visual Summary in the Classroom”) perfectly captures our vision. Combining information, visualizing it, and making it easier to transfer knowledge using images instead of simply listing facts and “thinking in tables/categories” helps children and adults to grasp complexity.
Frank : I share Comenius's conviction and hope that the world can be improved through education. During the Thirty Years' War, he invented the first schoolbook for children, the Orbis Pictus . This book contains the entire order and functioning of the world in pictures. Convinced of the powerful significance and effectiveness of visualization techniques, we want to make a very important and necessary contribution to education with the bikablo macht Schule project. Comenius's idea of the Orbis Pictus, along with its objective educational claim, is now being expanded into a systemic method to make subjective learning and understanding processes visible and communicable: The students themselves draw their understanding of the world in order to communicate it.
Karl : “In the beginning was the Word…” – that’s how the Gospel of John begins. – But is it really true? There’s much more to suggest that perception and imagery existed before the word. The dominance of spoken language in our culture and in schools makes us forget the intuitive content. As a philosophy teacher, I regularly see big question marks shining above my students’ heads after they’ve read a philosophical text. Visualization can help here. Following Kant, we must restore the intuition to concepts and abstract ideas. Words create mental images, and mental images are systematized with the help of concepts. Both are essential and make understandings and misunderstandings visible – specifically, I would like to see visualization firmly integrated into the methodological repertoire in the lower grades so that all subjects can benefit from it.
You've already established the connection between visualization and everyday learning. What is your main argument for how teachers and students can benefit from this?
Frank : Teachers and students benefit from this because learning processes become visible, communicable, tangible, and comprehensible for all involved. Sketchnotes, organizers, mappings, diagrams, etc., allow learners to develop a new attitude of acceptance, interpretation, and being understood, leading to a meaningful and relevant self-design of collaborative learning.
Karl : A good visualization can often make a deeper understanding or a problem of understanding more visible than a text. And it creates a vivid reference point that we can discuss. This is a great opportunity, especially for the interpretation of complex texts and issues.
That certainly sounds helpful. And how do teachers and students react to it in practice?
Sandra : Silvia and I have already developed and implemented a wide variety of training programs for students. These programs focus on developing reading comprehension skills, for example. The students' response has been very positive: extracting information from texts, visualizing it, discussing it, and creating a comprehensive overview – a complex visualization or visual summary – gives young people the opportunity to understand texts in depth. This allows them to retain the content of the texts in a memorable way.
It all sounds so simple when you explain it. But how do you actually go about something like that?
Silvia : First, our participants learn elements and techniques of visualization in analog training. The so-called target tasks can always be applied in learning situations in their own teaching. A complex competency task then aims to enable them to independently apply what they have learned in a dialogue setting.
Frank : Thinking with a pen is so simple and intuitive that it can be actively followed and illustrated. Therefore, for example, there's a self-explanatory station-based learning course that participants complete together, drawing and communicating with one another. Building upon this, these "visual vocabulary words" are combined to form visual connections, allowing the complexity to be communicated, understood, and simplified together.
The complex relationships are then presented as digital products (photo posters, explainer videos) that allow viewers to control the viewing experience (e.g., through focused filming and audio explanation). These digital formats are the result of an instructive, image-based exploration and are repeatable and shareable. Speaking with, through, and about images makes communication and learning visible, sustainable, and a consistently engaging and vivid experience.
Wow, thank you so much for the insight into your strategy. Of course, the materials available also play a role. Why is good material particularly important for your project?
Frank : As an art teacher, I know that good materials significantly facilitate the creative process, increase the likelihood of success, and even transform it into an aesthetic and sensory experience. Have you ever tried painting a picture with poor-quality brushes and low-grade pigment on paper that's too smooth? ... It's the same with visualization: Here, well-pigmented colored pencils that feel good in your hand and allow for clean lines thanks to their high-quality tips are essential. Neuland markers create this wow effect. They also impress with their sustainability, as each marker is refillable.
That immediately brings back memories of my own school days. It also reminds me of a typical phrase you've all probably heard many times: "I can't draw." How do you convince the more reserved students otherwise?
Christian : My typical answer: “Well, you have the ideal qualifications! After all, we're not talking about art, but about thought and communication processes. Visualization is a cultural technique that follows simple rules and can be learned by anyone just like reading and writing. Once you know a few rules, you'll be surprised by your own results – and of course, practice helps.”
As a practical demonstration, participants then learn to draw the UZMO lightbulb in 15 seconds; usually, no further convincing is needed. From that point on, they often don't let go of their pens so easily.
Sandra : In our training sessions, people don't learn to paint, but rather practice drawing. Every young adult was once a child and drew with their own hands: lines, dots, circles. We reactivate, practice, and deepen that ability.
There's something to that answer. So, anyone who isn't motivated to tackle this...
Can you draw any initial conclusions?
Frank : As an art educator, I've always enjoyed collaborative learning and teaching – and visualizing with Karina and Martin's bikablo technique inspires and enhances this joy of learning together even further! Our bikablo-makes-school team is therefore fully committed to establishing and cultivating this method and learning technique in schools. The positive feedback from participants, as well as the incredible support from bikablo and Neuland, makes this incredibly easy for us!
Karl : After the training courses, the feedback from students and colleagues is generally very good. Many positive responses are encouraging. I hope that acceptance in the school system continues to grow and that the potential of visualization techniques is recognized.
We hope so too! Is there a particularly memorable experience from a project that you'd like to share with us?
Sandra : Yes. Many. One very special one was when Silvia and I gave our first training session for students. One student, looking at his visualization, said to himself: "Goosebumps."
Frank : The shared joy with the students that this comprehensive method truly facilitates and communicates learning in school is truly special and brings genuine interpersonal joy and a more forgiving attitude towards mistakes to the often still anxiety- and stress-filled school environment. The many positive conversations, the shared motivation and vision—all of this unites us learners and makes perfect sense. We are happy to share this happiness, joy, vision, and purpose with you!
Silvia : Our big project in the Allgäu region at a special needs school together with Christian will also be a special experience.
You still have a lot ahead of you. We sincerely thank you for being here and wish you continued success in implementing this fantastic project.
If you also find this project interesting and would like to learn more about it, then you can find the bikablo macht Schule website here . 🙂
