![]() ![]() “It’s being able to focus and listen in a different way when you don't have those physical cues of letters and highlighted information. “The number one skill is listening,” says Pillars. Lastly, she’ll have the students watch the full video, so students can compare any images they may have drawn with the visuals they see the speaker used in their presentation. Then, she’ll play the audio again, this time allowing students to add visuals and connect their ideas. First, she has the class listen only to the audio of a video (about ten minutes long) and write down ten key words without illustrating at all. For example, she uses a scaffolding exercise to encourage students to translate what they hear into cohesive visual notes. To get students more comfortable with sketchnoting, Pillars starts with audio. “And then you have a co-created visual vocabulary that everybody can refer to when they take their own notes during that session of the unit.” “It gets their juices flowing,” says Pillars. ![]() They can crowdsource the class’s insights by putting students into groups and asking them to come up with drawings that represent main concepts. Teachers don’t need to come up with a visual library on their own either. And then, instead of a bullet point or maybe even at the top of your notes for that week, you have one icon or one little sketch,” she says. “Take those ten words and create your little visual library. He uses the scribbling exercise as a way to check in with students at the beginning of his classes, often having students scribble for the duration of a song and inviting them to put their creations up to the camera when they’re finished.įor teachers who are new to visual thinking, Pillars recommends that they identify ten key words or concepts in their lesson plans or week-long unit. That's the groundwork for students,” says Berman who likes to focus on how art can access students' emotions. Like all new skills, using sketchnoting as a tool to actively engage with classroom information takes a bit of practice for teachers and students alike. “You’re not just taking words and writing them down because you also have to hold what you want to write and draw while you're listening.” How to get started with sketchnoting “You've got multiple things happening in your brain at once,” says visual note taker and educator Wendi Pillars. This process of conceptualizing and prioritizing ideas gives students more insight into what they are learning and how they are learning it. ![]() Visual notes from a student in Wendi Pillar's astronomy class “It becomes an intuitive process of feeling like, ‘As I get this information, where do these words go? What words stand out? I can draw them bigger,’” explains Berman. Students can use spacing, symbols and text size to create a hierarchy of information that might be harder to capture in linear text. While classic note taking usually has a more rigid structure of lines and lines of text – and can border on the edge of transcription – sketchnoting is non-linear, creating different opportunities to identify connections between topics and themes. Sketchnoting doesn’t just lead to gains in keeping students’ attention, it’s a useful way for learners to organize and retain information. “Spending time using Zoom causes real wear, and we can give ourselves permission to look away from the screen.” Where doodling meets visual language “It can give us a lot more durability on camera,” says Berman. They’re actively listening and creating a visual representation of what they're learning while continuing to stay engaged in class. Sketchnoting gives students a reason to rest their eyes on something other than their computers. “You have this whole vocabulary of little drawings that can help you as a shorthand, but also make the notes much more pleasing to look at.” He says it’s much more than allowing students to doodle in the margins of their notebooks. “It’s creating a vocabulary of symbols and arrows that you can use to represent ideas,” says Bay Area-based artist and educator Todd Berman. Bleary-eyed learners may find the relief they need from staring at screens in an illustrative note taking method called sketchnoting. Signing into classes on video conferencing platforms for long remote learning days, clicking through cluttered Google classrooms and being dispatched to breakout rooms can leave many students burnt-out and exhausted. While “Zoom fatigue” is still a relatively new concept, students are experiencing it in a very real way. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |