Student Edition of VizAbility for Windows :

Wow! This is a superbly researched/designed visual thinking toolkit in a beautifully packed boxed collection. It consists of:- A 200-page Handbook (to provide you with a broad conceptual overview of visual thinking & to guide you through the interactive experiences of the CD-ROM);- A Sketchbook (to offer a forum for recording your ideas and experiences, including all the exercises in the book & CD-ROM);- An Interactive CD ROM (offer you an interactive environment in which to challenge & improve your visual skills; it has some video-clipped interviews with visual thinkers; a gallery of interesting examples);and comes with these goals in mind:- to familarise you with visual thinking;- to make you aware of your own innate visual abilities;- to exercise & your improve your skills in visualisation;- to incorporate these skills into your daily routines;You need to work conscientiously with these three components (each actually can stand on its own) in order to experience the vast array of visualisation activities. It has already taken me some ten weeks to digest and complete almost all the suggested exercises, alternating between reading, hands-on computer activities, and off-screen sketching on paper, plus various cycles of deep reflection and intellectual pursuit on the net. As of today, I am still working on some of the suggested activities. In fact, many of the completed activities led me to a lot of other new explorations, beyond the originally intended curriculum. My only complaint is that the interactive CD-ROM was not as exciting as I would have expected. This was probably due to the fact that the product was released in the mid-90s. Among the many visual thinking toolkits in my personal library, this one demanded the most of my brain and physical power. As the saying goes, once your mind is expanded by new ideas, it is never the same again! In a nutshell, if you are looking for a toolkit to help you expand your seeing, drawing, diagramming and imagining capabilities, this is it!