The process log: Making Thinking Visible and Therefore Observable and Therefore Inspirational (for YOU!)

The process log is simply a blog for documenting the process, support and insights of your visual thinking work. The log provides a venue for you to reflect on what you make in order to consider relevance and meaning for your work. Ideally through the process log you can see specific work in the context of your larger learning. In a class log, observe specific projects within the whole of the class. In multiple class logs over time, see your semester in the context of a year of learning, or the year within the four-year experience, etc. Learning and meaning emerge through reflecting on the specific experience. The process log is meant to create a mechanism for forming a habit of documenting and reflection.

The log can provide you with references and benchmarks to make visible patterns of interest that you might not otherwise notice.  These patterns can lend insight for making sophisticated choices for further study, or simply provide a vehicle for getting to know yourself better: what you like to study, what approaches you seem to prefer, and what doesn’t work for you.

Use it as a repository for annotated research (a live bibliography), and for a reference “image bank” illustrating your increasing skills. Use it to review world-wide images with live links for accessibility, annotation and to provide paths to follow for further discovery. Post as often as you like but regularly enough so that it becomes a habit. Observe the time of day/week that are most efficient and effective for you to stimulate your learning. When are you most engaged? When is the best time for you for reflective writing and thinking?

How To Begin:
Any blog software will work. This blog is created in WordPress which is flexible and versatile and provides good support. It’s also free of charge at the basic level. But any blog software will work–as long as viewers can directly comment (important: please ensure that commenting does not require any kind of password or image word translating—I have found that that inhibits free comments from your peers because it is too much trouble). You are welcome to set privacy settings so that only your classmates and instructors can see your p-log if you would rather not yet go “world-wide”. www.wordpress.com will help you get started. Google’s Blogger is an excellent choice as well, and may work more seamlessly with course content. Lynda.com offers tutorials for you with tips on blogging and various softwares. Using tags and categories will make for more efficient and meaningful resource mining as you expand your site.

Post daily. Use your images and screen shots of where you are in your work (this is a great way to show your work as it changes, especially as you work in PhotoShop and make significant changes to the iamge). Try to make sure images are in focus and position yourself so that the subject you are shooting is uncluttered. For examples and further reading see Links under P-Log hall of fame to the left of this post, and read Bees, Being and Blogging, a post inspired by the June 2012 Summer Visual Thinking course. You can see a more general discussion on the process log on the “about” tab in this blog.