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Basics of Sketchnoting

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Sketcho Frenzy: The Basics of Visual Note-taking

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Picture your classroom full of students. Are they a homogeneous group? Are they all alike? Do they learn the same way? Do they come with the same educational background? Do they bring the same life experiences? I'm going to guess your answer to those questions was no. In general, our classrooms are filled with students with varied backgrounds and experiences, and in turn, the way they perceive and learn may differ as well.

The Why: Neuroscience Behind Drawing

It can be challenging in a classroom filled with 20-plus varied learning styles to differentiate for each student. But one way to level the playing field is by introducing sketchnotes. Dewan (2015) asserts that "language itself rests on a foundation of visual thinking..." Visuals transcend language barriers and communicate in a way that words cannot. Because our brains are wired to code visuals dually, visuals are easier to recognize, process, and recall (Dewan, 2015). Since images are stored in two areas of the brain, they are more accessible for recall. Words, on the other hand, are singly coded, making them more difficult to remember. Furthermore, research shows that combining images with words increases memory and processing.

In fact researchers Whitehouse, Maybery, and Durkin (2006) found that when given the choice between pictures and print, people are able to recall more information with the aid of pictures. This is called the picture-superiority effect.

In the classroom, this means that teaching students to add drawings, sketches, or illustrations to text that they read or hear can aid their own recall, comprehension, and learning. Fernandes, Wammes, and Meade (2018) recently researched the effects of drawing "to-be-learned" information and came to the conclusion that it did in fact boost performance. They found that drawing promoted "the integration of elaborative, pictorial, and motor codes, facilitating creation of content-rich representation" (2018). Imagine the impact this can have on students' academic success now and beyond the walls of your classroom. As students add visuals, they are engaged in processing their thinking, clarifying with examples, interpreting information, and more. This strategy is a tool students can take with them for years to come. An added bonus is that sketching and drawing often relieves stress and anxiety.

The How: Sketchnoting with Students

This is not about coloring books and crayons. By no means is the suggestion to give students "busy work" of coloring, cutting, and pasting. The art of combining critical thinking with imagery and placing those two ideas on paper is where the power lives. Some students are more enticed to sketchnoting by the optional use of colored markers and sticky notes, while others just require a simple pencil and paper. I, myself, enjoy both paper and electronic sketching. Either way, color enhances my thought process. I put a great deal of thought into the visual I select for each point I need to convey.

It's Not About the Artwork

From the beginning, make it clear to students that sketchnoting is about creating purposeful notes that help them understand, remember, and convey important information from their learning. Some students will say that they can't draw so sketchnoting is not for them. Be sure to encourage and inform them that sketchnotes are not meant to be "professional" works of art. Icons, arrows, stick figures, and basic shapes make excellent sketchnotes additions. For inspiration, I use thenounproject.com or I Google a specific icon to copy.

On the other hand, some students will get way too artistic and take too much time getting extremely caught up in the details of the sketch. This, too, can create an issue in the classroom. Remind those artists that sketchnoting in the classroom is more about the and less about the . Some will want to go back later (after class hours) and add more detail to their work.

Besides pen, pencil, markers, and paper, there are digital options for sketchnoting as well. Not all sketchnotes must be on pen and paper. Auto Draw provides a way for students to create digital sketchnotes. There are also many apps available that do the same thing. Students can easily type text and add premade images. Canva, Buncee, and Piktochart are a few others that educators have successfully used with students.

Specific Ways to Teach Sketchnoting with Students

Prewriting

Sketchnotes can be a great way to scaffold writing. When students brainstorm for writing (fiction or nonfiction), using sketchnotes can help get ideas flowing and organize thoughts. With younger students, drawing and labeling leads to writing in complete sentences. This scaffold to writing helps students think of big ideas and tease out details. One way to do this with older kids is with sticky notes. They can draw ideas on sticky notes and organize them accordingly. They can label the sticky notes and easily move them around or add additional notes with ideas.

Reading and Listening

Sketchnoting can also dramatically increase the power of note taking for students. As students read a text or listen to a lecture, sketching or drawing visuals with labels enhances engagement, comprehension, and processing.

While reading texts, students stop at specific points such as paragraphs or chapters to synthesize and process by creating an image to represent what they read. Sketchnoting makes thinking and processing visual. This sketch opportunity forces students to stop and think of overarching ideas and details.

During lectures, students listen and pull out key ideas and details as the instructor speaks, adding them to their sketches as written words or visuals. Take, for example, typical notes students may take during a lecture. Usually they are all words. Some learn how to make them organized using the Cornell Notes structure. To increase recall, comprehension, engagement, and processing, students can add visual representations even within Cornell Notes.

Vocabulary

In Teaching Science to English Learners, authors Stephen Fleenor and Tina Beene share a strategy called Vocab Breakdown (p. 23) in which the teacher takes vocabulary words and breaks them apart by prefix, root, and suffix. Each student receives a part of the word and draws/illustrates their part. Groups come together to discuss their parts and what the whole word might mean.

We can take advantage of what researchers have discovered about the power of drawing and sketching and leverage it with students in our classrooms. Sketchnoting is not limited to a particular content area or grade level. Nor is it only for students with certain cognitive abilities or languages. It is accessible to many, it's cross-curricular, and it spans all grades.

References:

Dewan, P. (2015). Words versus pictures: Leveraging the research on visual communication . The Canadian Journal of Library and Information Practice and Research. Vo. 10, no. 1.

Fernandes, M. A., Wammes, J. D., & Meade, M. E. (2018). The surprisingly powerful influence of drawing on memory. Current Directions in Psychological Science , (5), 302-308. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721418755385

Fleenor, S., & Beene, T. (2019). Teaching science to English learners . Irving, TX: Seidlitz Education.

Terada, Y. (2019, March 14). The science of drawing and memory . Retrieved from https://www.edutopia.org/article/science-drawing-and-memory

Whitehouse, A. J. O.; Maybery, M. T.; Durkin, K. (2006, November). British Journal of Developmental Psychology. Vol. 24 Issue 4, p767-773. 7p. DOI: 10.1348/026151005X74153.

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Sketchnoting with Students: The Why and How

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by Valentina Gonzalez Picture your classroom full of students. Are they a homogeneous group? Are they all alike? Do they learn the same way? Do they come with the same educational background? Do they bring the same life experiences? I'm going to guess your answer to those questions was no.

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Making the web more beautiful, fast, and open through great typography

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Want students to remember something? Ask them to draw it.

It's long been known that drawing something helps a person remember it. A new study shows that drawing is superior to activities such as reading or writing because it forces the person to process information in multiple ways: visually, kinesthetically, and semantically. Across a series of experiments, researchers found drawing information to be a powerful way to boost memory, increasing recall by nearly double.

Myra Fernandes, Jeffrey Wammes, and Melissa Meade are experts in the science of memory-how people encode, retain, and recall information. At the University of Waterloo, they conducted experiments to better understand how activities such as writing, looking at pictures, listening to lectures, drawing, and visualizing images affect a student's ability to remember information.

In an early experiment, they asked undergraduate students to study lists of common terms-words like truck and pear -and then either write down or illustrate those words. Shortly afterward, participants recalled 20 percent of words they had written down, but more than twice as many-45 percent-of the terms they had drawn. This experiment helped to establish the benefits of drawing.

In a follow-up experiment, the researchers compared two methods of note-taking-writing words by hand versus drawing concepts-and found drawing to be "an effective and reliable encoding strategy, far superior to writing." The researchers found that when the undergraduates visually represented science concepts like isotope and spore, their recall was nearly twice as good as when they wrote down definitions supplied by the lecturer.

Importantly, the benefits of drawing were not dependent on the students' level of artistic talent, suggesting that this strategy may work for all students, not just ones who are able to draw well.

Across a total of eight experiments, the researchers confirmed drawing to be a "reliable, replicable means of boosting performance"-it provided a significant boost to students' ability to remember what they were learning.

Why is drawing such a powerful memory tool? The researchers explain that it "requires elaboration on the meaning of the term and translating the definition to a new form (a picture)." Unlike listening to a lecture or viewing an image-activities in which students passively absorb information-drawing is active. It forces students to grapple with what they're learning and reconstruct it in a way that makes sense to them.

The researchers also suggest that drawing results in better recall because of how the information is encoded in memory. When a student draws a concept, they "must elaborate on its meaning and semantic features, engage in the actual hand movements needed for drawing (motor action), and visually inspect [the] created picture (pictorial processing)."

At a neural level, the strength of a memory depends largely on how many connections are made to other memories. An isolated piece of information-such as a trivial fact-is soon forgotten in the brain's constant effort to prune away unused knowledge. The opposite, however, is also true: The more synaptic connections a memory has, the more it resists eventually being forgotten.

So when we draw, we encode the memory in a very rich way, layering together the visual memory of the image, the kinesthetic memory of our hand drawing the image, and the semantic memory that is invoked when we engage in meaning-making. In combination, this greatly increases the likelihood that the concept being drawn will later be recalled.

This Is Not About Learning Styles

It would be a mistake to think that drawing is beneficial because it taps into a particular learning style. Research has debunked the idea that students learn best when teachers try to match instruction to a single modality.

Instead, what's happening is that drawing taps into multiple modalities-visual, kinesthetic, and semantic-which is superior to tapping into only one. When students draw something, they process it in three different ways, in effect learning it three times over.

In the Classroom

Student-created learning aids: Instead of buying or printing posters that reinforce learning-maps, anchor charts, or diagrams-have students create them.

Interactive notebooks: Don't let students take notes verbatim-push them to be creative. One side of their notebooks can be used for written notes, the other for drawings, diagrams, and charts.

Data visualization: Asking students to collect, analyze, and present data in visual form can deepen their understanding of a topic. Examples include visualizing concepts in math, analyzing classical literature, and exploring fractals.

Bookmaking: Blending academics and art, students at Symonds Elementary create their own books to visually represent topics in subjects ranging from science to English language arts. Students can also create comics books to tell stories or describe events.

Assessing learning through art: Jill Fletcher, a middle school teacher in Hawaii, uses "one-pagers" to challenge students to show their understanding about a topic through art, making it less about finding the "single correct answer" and more about crafting a response they can stand behind. And students at Normal Park Museum Magnet School create travel journals as a visible record of their learning.

There are several ways that teachers can incorporate drawing to enrich learning.

The takeaway: Encourage students to draw. Doing so is a powerful tool to boost student learning because it improves recall by challenging students to explore an idea in different ways.

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Want students to remember something? Ask them to draw it.

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Fast drawing for everyone. AutoDraw pairs machine learning with drawings from talented artists to help you draw stuff fast.

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I signed up for Sketchnoting in the Classroom a few years ago. Each year, I teach the different strategies to my students. It really helps them with jotting down notes in their own 'words.' Many of my students will use pictures in their notes. It is extremely effective. I also use it with my notes when taking PD or notes during meetings.

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Sketchnoting In The Classroom - Verbal To Visual

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I signed up for Sketchnoting in the Classroom a few years ago. Each year, I teach the different strategies to my students. It really helps them with jotting down notes in their own 'words.' Many of my students will use pictures in their notes. It is extremely effective.

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The Powerful Effects of Drawing on Learning

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The science is clear: Drawing beats out reading and writing to help students remember concepts.

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Noun Project: Free Icons & Stock Photos for Everything

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Noun Project has the most diverse collection of free icons and stock photos. Download SVG and PNG. Over 5 million art-quality icons and free photos.

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These experiences convinced Paul and Gough that something powerful happens when auditory learning is transposed into images. It didn't take much to excite students about the idea.

"It really is amazing how much, with just a tiny bit of introduction, most kids will take to it," Paul said.

Teachers were more skeptical at first, but the approach and its results slowly won many of them over. A fifth-grade science teacher at Trinity was convinced when a student left his understanding of how magnets work on her desk -- a sheet of paper covered in drawings.

"What they can produce is beautiful and it makes them better listeners," Gough said.

The practice also makes student learning visible and provides a valuable formative assessment tool. If a student sketches an interesting side note in the lesson, but misses the big themes, that will show up in her drawing. And when students share their drawings with one another, they have the chance to fill in the gaps in their knowledge, and drawings, while discussing the key ideas. Going over the drawings also solidifies the information for students.

"We're using the collective brain to deepen all of our learning," Paul said.
BASED IN NEUROSCIENCE
While doodling has often been seen as frivolous at best and distracting at worst, the idea of sketchnoting has grounding in neuroscience research about how to improve memory. When ideas and related concepts can be encapsulated in an image, the brain remembers the information associated with that image. William Klemm, a professor of neuroscience at Texas A&M University, says the process is akin to a zip file.

"This is a way to get your working memory to carry more," Klemm said at a Learning and the Brain conference in San Francisco.

Klemm advocates thinking in images and stringing them together into what he calls "story chains," to vastly improve how much students can remember. Sketching notes makes these story chains visible and tangible.

"Teachers were amazed at the depth and diversity of what the kids produce, even the first time we tried this," Paul said.

Gough and Paul were originally inspired by Sunni Brown's TED Talk, in which she tries to convince listeners that drawing plays a central role in learning. Later the two educators took Brown's webinar, which helped give them useful tricks and, most importantly, the license to mess up, share their failures and keep practicing.

[ted id=1230]

And, while students take copious notes, they may not be retaining much of what they write down. When a student doodles, on the other hand, he is synthesizing the information, making choices about what's important and encoding the memory in a new way.

"If we draw or sketch, that's activating the visual pathway, so we're using our audio senses to take in information. But our output is visual, so there isn't that traffic jam," Gough said.

It can be hard to sketchnote in real time and keep up with the flow of a lectures. But even that isn't all bad. "Even the things you cut get attached to the things you did choose because you can take yourself back to that choice," Paul said. The two educators have also experimented with using little sketches as ways to take notes in the margins of books.
DOODLING IN THE DIGITAL AGE
It may seem like doodling will become a thing of the past as schools increasingly move towards digital textbooks and notetaking. But Gough and Paul say there are always ways to adapt the practice and new affordances that technology can offer. Since many public school students can't write in their paper textbooks anyway, perhaps they can sketch when they take notes virtually. Sketching with a stylus on a tablet, for example, could also offer some interesting new avenues for color and design that pen and paper don't.

More than anything, Paul and Gough want to offer multiple entry points for students to access learning. While doodling works for some kids, it might not for others and that's fine. What's most important is that teachers allow for variation in learning styles, even when it is unfamiliar to them.

"If we are going to model lifelong learning for and with children and our colleagues, sometimes we have to be uncomfortable and try it," Gough said.

Sketchnoting has become an important learning tool for these two educators, but they say it was just as important to practice public risk-taking.

Both women tweeted out their sketches from the very beginning -- a scary thing to do when the first pictures were mostly stick figures running off the page, but one that immediately helped generate support from other doodlers. Now Paul and Gough regularly share both their own drawings and their students' work and growth.

Don't miss an episode of Stories Teachers Share.

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Making Learning Visible: Doodling Helps Memories Stick | KQED

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Schools are teaching sketchnoting as an innovative way to help students synthesize information that's important. Doodlers are making connections from what they hear to what they draw.

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Freedman has come to see sketchnoting as a bridge between early elementary, when students necessarily think visually because they are still learning to read, and middle school, where suddenly all visual thinking seems to stop.

"One of my girls at the end of the year said that, 'I learned that sketchnoting helps me remember things more,' " Freedman said.

Freedman uses sketchnoting resources on the website of Sylvia Duckworth, a former teacher and author who has become a sketchnoting celebrity. Duckworth breaks down the elements of a sketchnote like icons, containers and font to help the artist think about organizing the sketch. Freedman has found those tools help her students organize their thinking as well.

"My students have their own podcast and they sketchnote their segments on notecards," she explained. Storyboarding in this segmented way allows them to move things around, finding a structure and coherence that doesn't come as naturally when writing is the first step in the process. "They wouldn't have been able to do that if it were on paper. They just don't see it that way."

She's also found that allowing students to sketchnote an outline or first draft of a writing assignment can dramatically improve the quality of the thinking and writing she receives. Freedman says her students always want the first draft to be the final draft, and they often write the bare minimum. But when they sketch first, not only do they organize their thoughts better, but they also tend to add more detail and evidence from what they've read. They have a template to follow, one that didn't feel as intimidating to make.

Since the genius project experiment, Freedman has offered sketchnoting as an option to her students in many other ways. She's found that student sketches are a great jumping-off point to ask them more about their thinking -- they look at what they've drawn and can tell her far more than they used to. And, she can easily spot when there are misconceptions.

For example, she quickly realized her students didn't understand what theme was because, when she asked them to sketchnote the story's theme, they would draw characters and setting. That was an immediate sign to Freedman she needed to reteach the idea of theme, something she might not have known from the cryptic sentences her students used to write in response to the same kinds of questions.

"It allows me to ask better questions because I'm not just looking at a simple answer or a paragraph," Freedman said. "I'm trying to interpret what's in front of me, too."

Freedman has also found sketchnoting to be surprisingly helpful dealing with the inevitable conflicts that crop up in the middle grades.

Ss learning about what sketchnoting is @HeckAwesome #sketchnote @manuelherrera33 @ZajacSLP #jjpride pic.twitter.com/hIwdRg2vgN

- Rayna Freedman (@rlfreedm) October 1, 2018

"I had these two girls that were up each other's throats," Freedman said. She asked them to stay in from recess one day, but rather than lecturing them, she asked each girl to sketchnote how she was feeling. Then they each looked at the other person's drawing and drew what it made them think. The drawings revealed the misunderstanding at the bottom of the conflict, and gave each girl enough emotional distance to truthfully express how they were feeling.

Kim Zajac is the speech and language pathologist at Freedman's school. She has also found sketchnoting to be a powerful tool for her students. One boy was regularly in conflict with other classmates. Zajac encouraged him to sketch out what happened in those interactions and to imagine and sketch alternative ways to handle it next time.

"Make it less of a criticism process and more of a social expectation process," Zajac said. This student wouldn't have been able to talk about how these interactions made him feel without the sketches. They gave him a concrete reference for his feelings and reactions to other kids.

In another instance, Zojac had a student who struggled to keep his speech rate up when he presented. To support him, she first had him explain his ideas to her while she sketched them. Later, when he presented in front of the class, he had the sketch as reference, which helped him stay on track.

"If they can just dump it out, put it in some symbolic form, then it allows them to recall it back, think deeper, and present it in a different form," Zojac said. And for the kids she supports, who have speech and language issues, sketchnoting offers important insights into their thinking that is otherwise difficult to access.

"It isn't about things being pretty," Zojac said. "It's not about creating a piece of art. It's about creating a piece of thinking."

Sketchnoting With Special Needs Students
Carrie Baughcum teaches students with special learning needs at South Middle in Arlington Heights, Illinois. Her students have a range of disabilities from motor challenges, to language challenges, to emotional and behavioral issues. She usually has students for English, math, social studies and a resource class, but they are integrated into other subjects throughout the day. And, as they become more independent learners throughout their time in middle school, they often transition out to the general classroom more often.

Before Baughcum discovered sketchnoting, she used a fairly traditional approach with her students. She was focused on building their comprehension skills and did a lot of skill practice with them. She always saw gains and made solid progress on her students' Individualized Education Programs (IEPs), but she hadn't done a lot of thinking about how to get them excited about what they were learning.

Baughcum had begun drawing at home with her daughters as a way of spending time with them. It was an uncomfortable experience for her. She didn't feel like a good artist, but noticed herself improving as she kept at it. And, she loved the insight she got into her own children's minds through their drawings.

"I was certain that the students in my special education classroom, two to three years below grade level, that they couldn't do it," Baughcum said at the Building Learning Communities conference. But she decided to test the theory one year with a group of students that happened to be all boys.

"It was one of the most challenging groups I've had in 20 years of teaching," Baughcum said.

They were reading an adapted version of Edgar Allan Poe's story, "The Fall of the House of Usher." Baughcum asked her students, "What movie is playing in your head when we read this paragraph?" No one said anything. So, she started narrating out loud what she imagined as she read.

She modeled drawing those thoughts into the margin of the book. Her students dutifully copied down what she had drawn. That went on for a while. Baughcum would walk around the room and ask her students questions about what they were drawing, even though the drawings were copies of what she had described. One day, a student decided to draw something different. Baughcum calls it the "going rogue moment." It transformed her classroom; overnight every student wanted to show that they imagined something unique.

"Since that moment when he went rogue, all the other students embraced the idea that they had these ideas in their head and we can draw them," Baughcum said.

Her students didn't have a lot of experience visualizing, but once she started asking them to do so, and they got comfortable with the idea, Baughcum has seen the practice deepen their comprehension. But, she cautions, it doesn't always look how she expects. She's even written a guide to sketchnoting in the classroom called My Pencil Made Me Do It.

"Their drawing could be so off base, but if I can go over and ask them about it, and they can connect it, then that's the right image for them," Baughcum said. She's adamant that the drawings themselves are not the point. It's the thinking behind the drawing that interests her. To keep her students focused on the process and not the product she's careful to use phrases like "visual thinking" and "doodling to learn."

Baughcum doesn't care what the drawings look like, as long as her students can talk about the ideas they represent. She never gives feedback on the drawings themselves, only on the thinking. She often spots misconceptions in the drawings her students have made -- valuable information for her -- but also opportunities to discuss editing the drawing to fill in those comprehension holes.

"The conversations we have in my classroom have become richer," Baughcum said, and there's less lag time retrieving thoughts. She points out to students how much cognitive processing is happening as they sketchnote. They're listening to information, making sense of it, connecting it to other information they know and to a visual image, and then drawing it. It's an active process, which is why Baughcum has found it to be so powerful for her students.

"That offers this really wonderful desire to want to do it more because they're feeling good about what they're thinking," Baughcum said.

Sketchnoting has changed what she expects from her students. But she acknowledges that using this practice in class is a marathon, not a race. It takes time to help students learn how to visualize, to see a picture in their heads. And, she's worked with them to think carefully about the icons, fonts and containers they're sketching. She wants them to have a reason for each choice they make in their sketchnote because those choices are directly connected to the material they are learning.

"When we're sketchnoting in class I tell students is it new, is it interesting, does it make you feel something? If so, it's probably worth taking down."

Baughcum also says it's important for teachers to sketchnote with their students. Drawing can make people feel vulnerable, so when the teacher acknowledges she's new to this as well, and makes mistakes, it creates room for students to try new things, too.

"Before I started sketchnoting with my students, I wasn't really a drawer," Baughcum said. "I have noted that opening up this new permission to draw and learn has opened up opportunities for students to show me parts of themselves they may not have shown before."

And she's seen huge successes. Like the first-year student who struggled tremendously with reading. Getting through a whole paragraph was almost impossible for him. But by visualizing the story as it was read to him, doodling in the margins, and connecting the ideas on the first read-through, he could then read it on his own. Baughcum was also quick to point out that students can sketch on Post-it notes pasted into books if they aren't allowed to write in the texts themselves.

"It surprised me that my students, no matter how impaired their cognitive level might be, or their reading level might be, how well their potential to visualize and connect to doodling is," Baughcum said. She even has students who use assistive technology to write because their motor skills make handwriting very difficult, but they can sketch. And the social worker on her team has picked up on the sketchnoting success to help make social and emotional learning themes more concrete for students as well. Students have created an icon library of their feelings that they use to express their emotions.

Baughcum isn't suggesting that every teacher drop what they've been doing for years to start sketchnoting. But she says if teachers open the door for sketchnoting, even allowing students to sketch as part of another note-taking strategy -- like Cornell notes -- it may be helpful to some students. She thinks of it as a layering strategy. She didn't stop covering her curriculum to only sketchnote. She gradually exposed her students to different elements of sketchnoting, building up their visualizing capacity and organization skills by practicing it alongside existing social studies or reading activities.

She also says teachers have to be patient with themselves and with their students. Often mindsets are the hardest things to overcome. Baughcum has had students who refuse to draw. But she's found ways around that. One student was adamant that she could not draw, but Baughcum still wanted her to visualize because she saw how much it helped her other students in their comprehension. She let the student print out pictures and glue them to her sketchnote to make visible her thinking. And ultimately, the girl decided to give sketchnoting a shot after all.

Baughcum says she's always been a fearless teacher, ready to try anything that might help her students learn. But sketchnoting has stretched her in ways she didn't know she needed to be stretched. It's revealed some of her own mindsets about what she believed students with learning disabilities could and couldn't do. Her students have shown her those beliefs just weren't true.

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Why Teachers Are So Excited About the Power Of Sketchnoting - MindShift

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Many teachers are using sketchnoting or "doodling for learning" in their classrooms as a way to make thinking visible. Many are finding the practice improves memory, engagement and comprehension.

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First Person

As teachers, we may never know the breadth or depth of impact we have on our students, but sometimes we are fortunate enough to learn that we have shared something valuable with our colleagues. It is even more exciting to find out that a colleague has, in turn, shared that technique or tool with her students.

I have been a passionate advocate for visual notetaking in the classroom since I stumbled upon author and designer Mike Rohde's book, The Sketchnote Handbook, about two years ago. As an elementary art specialist, I saw that, after incorporating the book's techniques into my classroom, using simple images to synthesize content and demonstrate understanding came naturally to students. Kids learn to draw before they write, and pictures are how they make sense of the world.

A previous generation referred to this form of notetaking as doodling, but that is starting to change. One reason this effective tool-which uses a combination of images and text to make meaning of verbal or text-based information-hasn't made its way into many teachers' hands is that the data-driven testing craze has usurped the time and energy to explore or try any new creative literacy strategies. With new math and reading curricula rolled out frequently, districts barely have time to train teachers the basics, much less explore creative literacy tools.

I decided to affect change within my immediate circle of influence and utilize these visual skills on a daily basis with my elementary art students. For the past two years, I have offered professional development workshops on visual notetaking and literacy to colleagues in my district to increase awareness of this literacy tool. These collaborations span across content areas and grade levels-with teachers in special education, teachers in social studies, and teachers in elementary through high school.

The Science of Memory

The success of visual notetaking is backed by science. The Picture Superiority Effect refers to the phenomenon that we remember pictures better and longer than words or text. If students read text alone, three days later they only remember 10 percent of the information-but adding a picture to the text increases recall to 65 percent. And dual-coding theory says that our brains process and store visual information differently than verbal or text-based information. When students use images and text in notetaking, it gives them two different ways to pull up the information, doubling their chances of recall.

Yet, when I first learned about visual notes, a teacher in my building made a student redo multiple worksheets for "doodling" in the margins, and other students would echo that they would get in trouble with their teacher for drawing.

Why aren't more teachers providing students with this option? And just as importantly, why are students actually being reprimanded for their natural instinct to record ideas visually?

See Also: The Benefits of Using Doodling and Sketchnotes in the Classroom (Opinion)

A Picture Is Worth a Thousand Words

One recent experience helped me realize the powerful ripple effect of teacher leadership and collaboration. I met Ms. G., who teaches English at the Juvenile Detention Center in Wauwatosa, Wis., during a notetaking workshop I led this summer. She invited me to her classroom to teach her students the technique in a simple way.

A dozen teenagers settled in and opened Beverley Naidoo's Out Of Bounds, an anthology of short stories about apartheid. For this class, they would read aloud and draw out the storyline on whiteboards. Ms. G. gently encouraged students-there were all levels of reading ability, ranging from elementary to high school-when they stumbled on a name or difficult word. When she stopped the reader, she asked, "What just happened, and what pictures could we draw to show that?"

In notes left on the board from the previous class, I could see that Ms. G. taught her students several techniques from my workshop. They had gotten the hang of using literal images to communicate complex concepts and emotions. They had made effective use of stick figures to show relationships between characters and used words and arrows to add clarity and meaning to their drawings. They had even used different fonts to stress the importance of main concepts and word bubbles to show who was saying what or to give meaning or detail to an idea.

For those 45 minutes, the marker became a transfer of power and a voice in the classroom. Most of the students offered to read a section of the book out loud or suggested visuals that would bring life to the text. Personal expression, demonstration of comprehension, and confident engagement were visible through a dry-erase marker. Students who would have not been able to engage with the text in other ways could still do so through the drawings used to represent concepts. Developing visual vocabulary is just like increasing verbal or textual vocabulary-it takes practice to move it into working memory.

Visualizing Success

The class left me with a reminder that visual notetaking could have infinite possibilities for so many students-minority students, students on the autistic spectrum, students with dysgraphia or dyslexia, English-language learners-if we could just put this tool into their toolboxes as another means to demonstrate their understanding.

Can a simple literacy tool like visual notetaking support learning in the classroom and even increase personal agency for incarcerated students who struggle academically? Ms. G. provides proof: Since that first class, she has used visual notes as an integral part of helping her students learn vocabulary from the books they read and give students the option to respond to a writing prompt with a visual answer first to help them think more deeply and communicate more clearly. One English-language learner who struggled with written definitions of vocabulary drew out his understanding and was able to visually communicate the definitions correctly.

When teaching students to use visual notes, it is so important to foster a safe space for students to take risks and try. In workshops, I find that the main obstacle for teachers is their fear of drawing. Teachers use the "but-I-can't-even-draw-a-stick-figure" excuse, but I encourage them and let them know that it is actually better if they draw poorly because it isn't about art-it is about ideas. If a teacher is brave enough to step up to the board and draw poorly while still communicating what she needs to relay, it gives students permission to do the same.

The author Margaret J. Wheatly writes, "A leader is one who ... has more faith in people than they do, and ... who holds opportunities open long enough for their competence to re-emerge." This is true for teacher and student leadership as well. We should strive to show our students and colleagues that we will hold space for them until their competence and creativity emerge. Visual notetaking is one small but powerful way to enable students-and their teachers-to take the lead.
Images provided by the author.
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First Person As teachers, we may never know the breadth or depth of impact we have on our students, but sometimes we are fortunate enough to learn that we have shared something valuable with our colleagues. It is even more exciting to find out that a colleague has, in turn, shared that technique or tool with her students.

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Sketchful.io - Multiplayer Drawing and Guessing Pictionary Game

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Sketchful.io - Multiplayer Drawing and Guessing Pictionary Game

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Sketchful.io is a free online drawing and guessing game. Play pictionary with anyone in the world! Be the fastest to guess and earn the most points to win!

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Use visual note taking to build understanding

Were you one of those students who always reached for a pen while listening to teachers or classmates? If so, you likely also remember being told to "stop doodling and pay attention!"

Thankfully, students today are far less likely to be chastised for doodling, and in many classrooms learners are being taught how to doodle purposefully as a way to record and internalize the salient points of a lesson.

This purposeful doodling is now referred to as sketchnoting, and it is now considered a useful technique to support information recall and build understanding.

In Sketchnotes 101, author Craighton Bermandescribes sketchnotes as "visual notes that are drawn in real time." By drawing pictures of what they are hearing, students' minds are engaging multiple modalities, often leading to increased retention of information. In Visual Note-Taking for Educators, author Wendy Pillars writes that sketchnoting or 'edusketching' - can improve retention by up to 55%.

In this video, my fifth-grade student Samantha explains how doodling engages "all four ways learners learn: audio, visual, reading/writing and kinesthetic."

Sam's TED ED Talk from MJGDS Classrooms on Vimeo.

I can imagine the protestations many of you have, so I will reassure you in advance: you do not need to be able to draw to introduce sketchnoting to your students! Sketchnoting isn't about art. The important concepts, shares Silvia Tolisano, are "ideas, connections, thinking, about the process, visualizing and organizing your thinking."

Although I don't consider myself a natural artist, I was fascinated by the visual notes other people take and decided to learn to sketchnote. I also wanted to understand the process so I could help my 4th and 5th grade students add this technique to their toolkit of learning strategies.

Anxiety about my artistic shortcomings, coupled with a lack of personal experience with the process, left me wondering how to give my students the best possible experience, so I reached out to art teacher Shana Gutterman for ideas about implementing this style of note taking.

We began by having students watch Claudine Delfin's Sketcho Frenzy: The Basics of Visual Note-taking. Shana then modeled the process by creating a sketchnote on the classroom whiteboard as I read aloud a chapter from a book my class is reading.

Despite being a skilled artist, Shana had never taken visual notes before. She was surprised at how natural it felt and found herself "thinking as I was drawing and retaining more information from the chapter than I would have if I just listened."

Next, we distributed paper and colored pencils and asked the students to try sketchnoting. While some students preferred careful listening to sketchnoting, many loved the strategy and asked to be allowed to sketchnote during read-aloud time in class.

Many of my students who continued to sketchnote elected to use Wixie and other digital tools available in my classroom. Students also used sketchnoting during listening activities such as Skype calls with experts and with students in other classrooms.

I was delighted to see that many of the students who struggled to some degree with recall or other areas of listening comprehension were drawn to sketchnoting. Their sketchnotes aided them with writing assignments and appeared to enhance their enjoyment of listening.

Introducing Sketchnoting to Students

1. Remember that neither you nor your students need to be artists to sketchnote.

2. Show your students examples of sketchnotes. Practice "reading" and interpreting someone else's sketchnote to make meaning from their doodles.

3. Model how to take visual notes with another teacher or student volunteer.

4. Have all students practice sketchnoting during read-alouds, test review sessions, instructional videos, or other activities where note-taking can be useful.

5. Let students share their notes in small groups or with the whole class and reflect on the process. What did they enjoy about this strategy? What was challenging? Is this something they would like to try again? Point out and affirm the variety of ways students can interpret and record the same material.

6. Try the process using a variety of tools. If students used pencils or markers the first time, encourage them to use a computer or tablet. Reflect on which techniques students found most valuable.

7. Implement sketchnoting for those students who find it helpful. Remind students to use their notes while studying or writing.

8. Avoid using sketchnotes for assessment. They are a cognitive tool to support understanding and recall, not an evaluation of it.

We live in a visual world. We all learn differently and demonstrate mastery in unique ways. Though many of us do not feel artistic, giving students opportunities to express their ideas visually using sketchnoting provides them a powerful strategy they can use to take ownership of their learning.

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Were you one of those students who always reached for a pen while listening to teachers or classmates? If so, you likely also remember being told to "stop doodling and pay attention!"

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Alternative note-taking practices like mind-mapping and sketchnoting prompt students to organize their thoughts visually, boosting comprehension and retention.

kategisme/Twenty20; AJ_Watt/iStock; sydneyskye/Twenty20;

Unlike conventional note-taking, which can "border on the edge of transcription," allowing students to try more visual, interpretive methods of processing materials helps them "identify connections between topics and themes," writes Nimah Gobir for KQED.

One technique known as sketchnoting-simple, hand-drawn renderings of things like facts, dates, or abstract concepts-allows students to respond to complex new ideas by engaging multiple parts of the brain simultaneously to deepen learning and retention, says Gobir. Instead of passively writing down everything a speaker is saying, the practice pushes students to actively process and make sense of what they're learning.

"Sketchnoting doesn't just lead to gains in keeping students' attention, it's a useful way for learners to organize and retain information," she writes. "They're actively listening and creating a visual representation of what they're learning while continuing to stay engaged in class."

Findings from a 2018 study back that up: Students who were asked to draw what they'd learned were nearly twice as likely to remember information than students who wrote the same information down. Drawing wins out because it allows information to be processed in multiple ways, explained Edutopia's research editor Youki Terada: "When we draw, we encode the memory in a very rich way, layering together the visual memory of the image, the kinesthetic memory of our hand drawing the image, and the semantic memory that is invoked when we engage in meaning-making."

Here are some ways to introduce visual note-taking to your students:

Rethink Your Paper: Note-taking doesn't need to happen between the lines and within the margins of a sheet of notebook paper. The "more rigid structure of lines and lines of text" can bind the minds of some students, while the freedom to reimagine the space can free them, writes Gobir. Encourage students to play with spacing, vary text sizes, and add symbols anywhere on the page "to create a hierarchy of information that might be harder to capture in linear text."

Start With a Little Practice: Not all students will welcome the idea of sketchnoting and other visual note-taking methods at first, so encourage them to start off just scribbling. Artist and educator Todd Berman has students "scribble for the duration of a song," Gobir explains, which gets the creative juices flowing and creates a comfortable setting for the introduction of the concept. Berman then invites students to share what they've created with the class.

Develop a Symbolic Language: Educator Wendi Pillars has students "identify 10 key words or concepts" from the current learning materials and begin developing a visual library of shorthand-like an icon or character-to represent them, shares Gobir. Get students' input for the library too, recommends Pillars, so "you have a co-created visual vocabulary that everybody can refer to when they take their own notes." In time, students will develop their own vocabularies and visual note-taking styles independently.

Keep It Low-Fidelity: Communicate to your students that they don't have to be accomplished artists to use visual note-taking techniques: The process isn't about ensuring that the sketches and drawings look good, but that students find a way to tease out the relationships between topics and concepts. "It's giving them permission to say, 'You know what? Here's the key concept. Here's the key information," explains Pillars, who says she emphasizes to students that there is no right or wrong way to take visual notes.

Skip the Grading: Sketchnoting, diagrams, freehand drawing, mind-mapping, and similar techniques are vehicles to get student thoughts down on paper-not practices meant to demonstrate their mastery of subject material. Educator Sarah Schroeder suggests focusing on grading what is "construct relevant," or "avoiding measuring what is irrelevant or can't be measured," like creativity. Attaching a grade to visual note-taking might inhibit the student as they struggle to make sense of complex material, make them feel self-conscious, or simply be so subjective as to be meaningless-so provide feedback rather than a grade.

Join In: Modeling visual note-taking techniques for your students can be a great way to inspire them to try something new. Pillars uses her whiteboard and paper to show students how she visualizes her thoughts. "As we take the notes together, I will ask students, 'How would you represent it?'" she shared with Gobir. "And they'll shout out ideas like, 'You could draw this or this!' And sometimes I tell them 'I can't draw that! You want to come on up here and show [the class]?'"

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How-and Why-to Introduce Visual Note-Taking to Your Students

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Visual note-taking allows information to be processed by the brain in three different ways.

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by Valentina Gonzalez

When you look at a piece of art or a photograph, what happens in your mind? Images like these often tell a story. There's a message, the main idea, and the details. How do we decipher one from the other? What do we infer? How do we interpret imagery? The truth is, our own personal lived experiences and background knowledge come together as we meet an image, forming an idea and creating an interpretation. It's at this intersection that we synthesize.

What Is Visual Literacy?

The term "visual literacy" was first coined in 1969 by Jack Debes, founder of the International Visual Literacy Association (IVLA). But is visual literacy itself a new concept? Think about cave paintings that date back over 30,000 years. They, too, communicate through visuals. The visual literacy definition continues to evolve as the world around it does. The IVLA currently uses this definition:

Visual literacy is a set of abilities that enables an individual to effectively find, interpret, evaluate, use, and create images and visual media. Visual literacy skills equip a learner to understand and analyze the contextual, cultural, ethical, intellectual, and technical components involved in the production and use of materials. A visually literate individual is both a critical consumer of visual media and a competent contributor to a body of shared knowledge and culture. (Visual Literacy Standards Task Force, ACRL, 2011)

Why Is Visual Literacy Important?

We live in a visual world. It has become increasingly more visual with the invention of the internet, tablets, and smartphones. Being able to interpret visuals and use them as a way to communicate messages to viewers is critical. Pictorial representations are common in all content areas. Visuals surround us in daily life, making it essential for students to understand their uses and incorporate them into their work.

Even more importantly, visual literacy provides an accessible platform for critical thinking. Images carry meaningful messages that we can leverage to help students communicate their thoughts and ideas with one another. We can use images to guide powerful peer-to-peer conversations that push students' thinking, language development, and concept attainment.

Take a moment to reflect on your day-to-day routines. Think about the visuals that surround your daily life (advertising, infographics, texting, television, social media, street signs, communication, aesthetics, etc.). Ask yourself these questions:

Are visuals used?

How much are they used?

When and why are they used?

What message(s) does the creator want to convey?

How Does Visual Literacy Fit into EL Instruction?

Visuals enhance learning, memory, and comprehension. Studies on the impact of pictures on memory have shown that pictures are superior to words alone. The theory is called the pictorial superiority effect. Many teachers of English learners (ELs)already use images, pictures, and multimedia to help ELs comprehend challenging English curriculum. We can use the opportunity to increase student engagement and critical thinking, to probe and ask for evidence. In Mastering Vocabulary with Visuals, Dr. Fleenor describes how visuals can support vocabulary development.

Many state standards include students' abilities to read, analyze, and deconstruct visual images. For example, one of the Common Core third grade reading standards asks students to "explain how specific aspects of a text's illustrations contribute to what is conveyed by the words in a story (e.g., create mood, emphasize aspects of a character or setting)."

In this video for Edutopia, director and actor Martin Scorsese shares the importance of visual literacy and why we should teach it in our classrooms.

Here are three practical ideas for using visual literacy with ELs:

Word Clouds

Create Word Clouds as warmups to a lesson or at the end of a lesson or unit. After creating a Word Cloud as a class, analyze it using the questions and sentence stems below. Here's an example of how that might look and sound.

What do you see? The word ___ is larger/smaller than all of the other words.

What do you think? I think a lot of people agree that...

What makes you think that? I think the word ___is larger/smaller than all of the other words because...

What surprises you? I'm surprised that...because...

Maps

Post a distorted map or cartogram of your community, the world, or your state, and start a discussion.

Image from https://gisgeography.com/cartogram-maps/

What do you see? I see a map of ...

What do you think? I think the map is showing a representation of...

What makes you think that? I know that ____, ____, and ____ all...

What surprises you? It surprises me that ____ is...

Sketchnotes

Have students take visual notes/ sketchnotes while reading, viewing a video, or listening to a lecture. Then pair them up and have them talk with partners about the notes they made.

Skectchnote by Valentina taken at Adrian Mendoza's Sheltered Instruction in Math Training

What do you see? I see images of...

What do you think? I think the main idea is...

What makes you think that? The words ___ stick out big and are repeated in ...

What surprises you? I'm surprised by the quote...

Picture Books

Take a picture book with illustrations and one with actual photographs on the same topic that you've previously read as a class. Open each book to a page with an image. Use them to discuss the author's purpose and message.

Eg. Diary of Spider by Doreen Cronin and Spiders by Seymour Simon

What do you see? In the ___ book, I see...

What do you think? The drawn illustrations make me think...but the real photographs...

What makes you think that? I think the illustrator/photographer wants to make viewers believe that...

What surprises you? I'm surprised that...

It's easy to see that visual literacy promotes higher-order thinking skills and language development through a low-stress entry point. I remember first hearing about visual literacy as a teacher. It seemed like such a vague concept, and I really couldn't wrap my brain around how it fit into the curriculum in my classroom. As our team planned, we tried to understand why it was important. It took a while to see that visual literacy is more than taking pictures at face value. Visual literacy is about critical thinking and seeing the world through multiple perspectives.

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by Valentina Gonzalez When you look at a piece of art or a photograph, what happens in your mind? Images like these often tell a story. There's a message, the main idea, and the details. How do we decipher one from the other? What do we infer? How do we interpret imagery?

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The drawing effect: Evidence for reliable and robust memory benefits in free recall

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In 7 free-recall experiments, the benefit of creating drawings of to-be-remembered information relative to writing was examined as a mnemonic strategy. In Experiments 1 and 2, participants were presented with a list of words and were asked to either draw or write out each. Drawn words were better recalled than written.

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Mental Imagery > Dual Coding and Common Coding Theories of Memory (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

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The more intricate details of Dual Coding Theory are beyond our scope here, but the core idea is very simple and intuitive. Paivio proposes that the human mind operates with two distinct classes of mental representation (or "codes"), verbal representations and mental images, and that human memory thus comprises two functionally independent (although interacting) systems or stores, verbal memory and image memory.

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The Basics

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Welcome to the second article in the the new Core77 "Sketchnotes Channel" (www.core77.com/sketchnotes) where we'll be exploring the application of visual thinking tools in the worlds of design and creative thinking.

So you say you're ready to start sketchnoting.

Maybe you're not much of a sketcher but you take a lot of notes, and are interested in making them more meaningful and interesting, but you're afraid your drawings are too crude. For you, it's important to stress that sketchnotes-although they are inherently a visual medium-do not require drawing ability of any kind. Essentially they're about transforming ideas into visual communication; structuring thoughts and giving hierarchy to concepts can be completed with strictly text and a few lines.

Maybe you're perpetually drawing and want to try and make your notes more useful and engaging but you are afraid of imposing structure to your normally freeform way of sketching. For you it's important to consider that sketchnotes can be as linear or abstract as your personality (or the presentation) dictates. Some content is best sketchnoted by listening closely and attempting to accurately synthesize and structure the thoughts. Usually these presentations have a very logical progression that may already be based in some sort of structure, so they lend them selves nicely to this style of sketchnoting. More narrative-based storytelling may be best sketchnoted by casually doodling along with the content and letting the content inspire your visuals. Story-based presentations may be best represented by capturing the overall experiences through quotes and illustrations of the anecdotes, and not necessarily imposing rigid structure.

In the end, it's up to you. As I mentioned in my previous article, sketchnoting is equal parts public, personal, and practice-so it's more fruitful to explore a new style and challenge yourself to record ideas in new ways, than to worry about the end result's overall effectiveness or aesthetic. Sketchbooks should be sketchy.

So let's get tactical. How should you go about approaching sketchnotes? What do you need to get started?

First you need the right tools for the job. And by "right tools" I mean, "any sketchbook and pen combination that makes you happy." Preferences for media and marking-tool probably span back to the days of the caveman; there's no right answers.

My recommendation is to use an non-ruled notebook that feels big enough to draw in while it's in your lap, yet small enough that you're willing to bring it everywhere you go. For mark-making, start with a single black pen and once you feel you can move fast enough, add a color to the mix.

Once you have your kit assembled, you'll need to think about the location you'll be sketchnoting. In a lecture scenario, make sure you're near a secondary light source: in many conference halls they dim the lights, which is great for people with glowing screens, but rough for those using paper & pen.

Before the presentation begins, you may choose to plan a little bit and get the page set up. Take this time to look up the person's name and title, and get it on the page spelled right and in a little more "designed" manner (typography, a cartooned portrait, etc.), while you have the time. Also worth noting is the time allotted for the lecture. If it's an hour, you can mentally subdivide your sketchbook spread into 4 quarters, and pace your drawing if you want to keep the lecture contained. (In this case, I'll be sketchnoting Alec Baldwin's motivational speech from Glengarry Glen Ross.)

Once the lecture begins you'll want to begin your "circular breathing" of listening, synthesizing, and visualizing. It's important that you're able to take in what's being said while recording it, and not just stick your head down in your sketchbook. One of the most important assets is your "mental cache": the spot in your brain where you can store temporary ideas. With practice, you'll be able to store multiple quotes, thoughts, or ideas in a queue while you're sketchnoting. This "mental cache" also allows you to listen to multiple points and synthesize them down to what's important-before writing anything.

Inside of your sketchbook, you'll use a few key elements build your sketchnotes:

Text - Recording the verbal is quick, direct, and clear and is usually your primary sketchnoting tool. Capture the meaningful quotes and key points, and avoid trying to summarize everything. Typographic treatments can be used to give emphasis to major ideas, and can add interest to large blocks of text. Avoid making lists or outlines and use the spatial properties of the page to your advantage by "chunking" information. Some ways to force yourself to work spatially might be starting in the middle and working outwards or working in columns for a panel discussion.

Containers - Simply enclosing words in shapes brings emphasis and structure to an otherwise wild page. Some of the more common containers include (but are not limited to): quote bubbles, boxes, circles and thought clouds.

Connectors - Connect ideas and pieces of stories with arrows and lines. A basic chain of thoughts can scintillate around the page and still be clear if they are linked with a simple set of connectors.

Frameworks - Some presenters will have a very obvious structure to their presentation, but often times the insights may benefit from your own synthesis into an understandable underlying structure or model. Common frameworks include 2×2s, Venn diagrams, and continuums.

Icons - Don't forget to put the "sketch" in sketchnotes. Strive to create "icons" for objects & concepts: distill reality into a simple drawing that represents the idea as simply as possible and move on.

Shading - Adding some simple shading can add dimensionality and contrast to your notes. Techniques like hatching can be done with your primary pen, so they can be integrated very quickly. Fills with a light grey marker can also be extremely quick, however you will have to put your primary pen down while shading, and risk potentially missing content.

Color - When sketchnoting for the first time, I would recommend waiting on color until you feel you can fit it in your workflow, yet still keep up with the content. Once you feel confident you can continue to listen and use your "mental queue" to keep up with the content, you might be able to integrate some color from markers or pencil. I would recommend coloring minimally to differentiate and distinguish information, and if there's time later, come back to color in the "icons" or type. Limiting yourself to a 2-3 color palette will also help keep the color in service of clarity, with aesthetics coming second.

With those basic elements, you'll be ready to go. A few final points to keep in mind:

Think improvisation, not perfection. Sketchnoting isn't illustration--it's content-driven doodling. If you mess up a line, draw over it again. If you misspell a word, scratch it out. Just like improv, being in the moment is more important than refined output.

Don't be a completist. Let stuff slip by if it doesn't interest you.

Put your 2¢ in. They're your perspective on a topic, so feel free to add your own commentary to the page.

Inject your personality into the pages. Do you draw misproportioned people, have shaky lines, and quirky handwriting? Cool, so do I. Run with it.

Ok, so maybe you're not headed to a conference or lecture any time soon. Are there ways to practice in the mean time? The answer, of course, lies on the interwebs. Sources for online lectures abound, but the giant in the space is the TED Talks archives. A personal favorite that I use for first time sketchnoters is Gever Tully's " 5 Dangerous Things You Should Let Your Kids Do". From the title, you already have an idea that there will be 5 basic sections, but as in real life, you'll need to be on your toes for any improvisation on the part of the presenter. Dig into those TED archives and queue up those movies people always forward to you, but you never get around to watching.

Now that you're armed with the basics of sketchnoting, there's no reason not to pull out the sketchbook-even in the next work meeting you're sitting in-and start visualizing the conversation in real time. You'll be amazed at the results.
Next up in the sketchnotes channel: Visual thinking outside of the conference hall.

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Sketchnotes 101: The Basics of Visual Note-taking - Core77

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Welcome to the second article in the the new Core77 "Sketchnotes Channel" (www.core77.com/sketchnotes) where we'll be exploring the application of visual thinking tools in the worlds of design and creative thinking.So you say you're ready to start sketchnoting.Maybe you're not much of a sketcher but you take a lot of...