It made me look back at my own time in school. There was virtually zero training in visual communication. And now that I think of it, this is actually not solely because of a lack of technology (I got my first home computer at around 1986).
- Primary school. No visuals were encouraged when you had to do your lecture on let's say "the hamster"
- High school. The teacher would write his course notes in long sentences on the black board and asked us to copy them in our note books
- In economics there was a total absence of describing market forces, company strategy, and results of data analysis in conceptual graphs
- Writing was all about correct senstences and grammar, not convincing structure or logic
- Later in university, professors would put overhead copies of his course material on the projector, requiring you to study the 4 aspects (bullet points) of issue A, B, and C.
I hope things are better now. My kids are a bit too young still for me to get first-hand experience.
Making things more difficult, visual communication would probably involve the combination of a number of subjects. In high school: economics, mathematics/logic, language, arts, etc.
Does the availability of PowerPoint in the highschool class room today actually help to make kids better at communicating? Or is it counter productive?