Heightening the Brainstorm

I want to share the method by which one of my composition students from the previous semester generated ideas and organization for his papers in my class. I don’t think the premise of what he does to brainstorm is novel, but I was intrigued by the way white boards and his phone camera played into the story. He told me that, when he was preparing his papers on his subject of

sustainability, he preferred to go to the library, to find a table with white boards nearby, and then to start filling them with the ideas and connections that came to him as he pondered the subject and reviewed his sources. Then, having filled a considerable amount of space, he took out his phone to photograph the boards to study later. I asked him if I could see these photos, and after he shared them with me, I asked him if I could share them on my teaching blog, to which he assented and so now they illustrate this entry.

Again, I don’t think that the simple premise of brainstorming, as highly effective as it usually is, is in itself notable in this instance, but I strongly suspect that the technologies involved heightened the effectiveness of this strategy. His papers that semester were consistently well-organized and highly detailed, which I would attribute in part to his composition process. For example, might not the greater space afforded the writer by white boards not only provide room for thought, but also make it easier to go back and analyze or evaluate thoughts without shuffling through papers? Would being able to quickly scan over a large surface covered with multiple ideas and evidence facilitate holistic thinking, which ultimately would benefit writing coherent arguments? Even the ease with which dry erase markers work across the slick surface of the board might likely keep a better pace with the rate of the flow of thought at its most productive.

I have followed similar strategies in class when, as a group, we have collectively brainstormed, even photographing the boards afterwards, but this is the first case in which I’ve known of a student individually applying this. When I teach Composition I later this summer, I would like to incorporate this student’s technique with each of my individual students if the ratio of students to board space permits and after we’ve already done some collaborative pre-writing.