MULTIPLE INTELIGENCE (Visual-Spatial)

Perceive the visual world accurately; Create mental images; Capacity to think in images and pictures, to visualize accurately and abstractly

• The ability to represent the spatial world internally in your mind – the way a sailor or airplane pilot navigates the large spatial world, or the way a chess player or sculptor represents a more circumscribed spatial world
• Can be used in the arts or in the sciences.  If you are spatially intelligent and oriented toward the arts, you are more likely to become a painter or sculptor or architect than, say a musician or a writer.  Similarly, certain sciences like anatomy or topology emphasize spatial intelligence
• Uses the sense of sight and being able to imagine and visualize an object, including making mental images inside our head

We often say, "A picture is worth a thousand words," or "Seeing is believing."  Visual-spatial intelligence represents the knowing that occurs through the shapes, images, patterns, designs, and textures we see with our external eyes, but it also includes the images we are able to conjure inside our heads.
If you are strong in this intelligence you tend to think in images and pictures.  You are likely very aware of objects, shapes, colors, textures, and patterns in the environment around you.  You probably like to draw, paint, make interesting designs and patters, and work with clay, colored markers, construction paper and fabric.  Many who are strong in visual-spatial intelligence love to work jigsaw puzzles, read maps, and find their way around new places.  You probably have definite opinions about colors that go together well, textures that are appropriate and leasing, and how a room should be decorated.  You also are probably excellent at performing tasks that require seeing with the mind's eyes, such as visualizing, pretending, imaging, and forming mental images.
Careers:Interior decorators, graphic design artists, cartographers, photographers, architects, airline pilots, surgeons, painters, sculptors, chefs (with their food presentations), quilters, needle point embroiders, landscapers, theater set designers, professional drivers, cinematographers, book illustrators, tour guides, jewelry and clothing designers
BENEFITS to you of strengthening your Image Smarts intelligence include:

• Being able to visualize what you want in your life and make it happen
• Gaining the ability to express your ideas and make them clearer through visual representation
• Discovering powerful aids to memory–our brains naturally think in images and pictures before we have words
• Teaching yourself to "think outside the box"
• Accessing your own deep sources of inner wisdom and guidance

Teaching Resources

• Map
• Diagrams
• Illustrations
• Battlefield representations
• Historical timelines

Basic MI Activities - Teaching Activities

• Construct thematic web pages that include various visual images (e.g., posters, political cartoons, broadsides, photos, illustrations)
• Construct hyperlinked timelines and maps

Instructional Strategies - Teaching Activities

• Imagery
• Map analysis
• Observation activities
• Construction of dioramas or posters

Visual spatial intelligence makes it possible for us to perceive visual and spatial data, to transform such data, as well as being able to recreate visual images from memory.  In other words, it is an ability to form a cerebral model of a spatial world by relying on the sense of sight.  This way of understanding the world includes the ability to create mental images and to use ones imagination.

• Young children might build cities out of blocks and create impromptu murals on the kitchen and bedroom walls.  They like to draw, paint, make interesting designs and patterns from fabric, colored construction paper, and clay.  As well, they love putting together jigsaw puzzles.  
• Older children tend to be good at reading maps and finding their way around new places, daydreaming, creating accurate drawings; they may find it easier to learn information that is presented in images rather than just by words.  Put a slightly different way, a strength here often means one does well at visualizing things. 
• Adults think in images and pictures.  They are often very aware of objects, colors, shapes and patterns in the environment.  They possess strong opinions about such things as colors that go together, textures that are pleasing and appropriate, and decorating.  To sum, they are excellent at performing tasks that require seeing with the mind's eye (visualizing, forming mental images, imagining, and pretending).

People Examples:

Michelangelo
Leonardo Da Vinci
Picasso
Van Gogh
Monet
Mary  Cassatt
Rembrandt
Diane Arbus
Grandma Moses
I.M.  Pei
Frank  Lloyd  Wright
Meryl Streep
Annie Liebovitz
Steven Spielberg 
Georgia O'Keefe