How Do I Love Thee: Abstracting

Abstracting as a cognitive tool.  Having the ability to identify and to single out a major attribute from a concept, image, domain, or anything is called abstracting. Once the main feature has been identified, the feature is further represented to emphasize its significance. This cognitive tool also uses analogy to highlight the major elements.      

How this understanding impacts my topic.  Abstracting, is a thinking tool that brings about the simplest but the most compelling reason that I came up with my course topic:  Recognizing the relevance of social networking to adult learning. The very essence that I can extract from social networking is CONNECTION.  An adult learner who has learned this thinking tool has the ability to grasp the concept of thinking abstractly about considering everyone as major pieces of a connection.  Through abstracting, he also can picture himself in the connection and someone who has a vital role to contribute to the relevance of the network.

How and why you choose this abstraction and representations.  A connection can be represented by people who are interconnected through social media.  A connection can also be represented by the relevant interests, talents, and skills each member of network can offer that could bring about more connections. To illustrate abstracting, I decided to use nature to represent the two elements of connection.  DANDELIONS with WATER DROPLETS can be an abstract representation of the core of my course topic.  The dandelion is a visualization of the whole social network of people which are represented by the flower seeds.  The water droplets portray the interests, talents, and skills that join people.  As the interests, talents, and skills get bigger, so does the droplets of water. 

I find this tool a thought-provoking and interesting way of representing ingenuity! Well, another way unleashing our creativity …