Something about note taking has always seemed…well rather boring. You listen to the lecture, scribble down as much information as fast as you can, and then never look at that information again. During my first day at NCCAT I saw one of my teammates, Nate Bourne, taking notes, but his notes looked incredibly interesting – like something you would want to actually go back and look at. He informed me that this style of note taking was called Sketch Notes or Visual Notes.
Rather shocked that as an Art Teacher I’d never heard of this style of note taking before, but intrigued because the aesthetic appeal of taking notes like this immediately captured my attention, I began to search the internet for some easy resources to get started taking notes like this. Below are my first two attempts at sketch notes about taking sketch notes.
Over course of the week as we listened to lectures and took part in professional development I continued to taking notes in this style, and by the end of the week I found that it is a wonderful way of making my notes informative and interesting. They have also drawn a lot of positive comments and attention, even though I am still very new at this style of note taking.
Even after our time at NCCAT I have enjoyed taking notes in this style and am continuing to do it when ever the need to take notes arises. Overall, I really like the process and the end results of sketch noting. I’ve found that for people like me who normally doodle and draw all over their notes, which can sometimes lead me to getting distracted and not really paying attention, sketch notes are a great opportunity to capture the content and create at the same time. Furthermore, I also think introducing this style of note taking to my students would be a great way to show them how to use their creativity to create interesting visual notes.
If you are interested in taking notes like this, here are some of the best resources that I have found and what I used to get started:
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2014/11/10/how-to-get-started-with-sketchnotes/
http://www.schrockguide.net/sketchnoting.html
http://lirc.rchk.edu.hk/yr-45-visual-note.html
visual_note_basics_2 (Short Sketch Noting PDF)
How is this the first time I am hearing of this???!!! Teaching at an arts magnet school, this should run rampant in our classes, but it doesn’t. I need to check out your links, get familiar with the technique myself and make it a regular form of note taking in my classes…especially in Scientific VISUALIZATION! Thanks for sharing and I am bookmarking this post to refer back to in the future…
After seeing your notes and thinking more about using them in my classes, I have started putting ideas into place on how to make this a useful tool in my classes. I still haven’t fully worked it out yet, but I am keeping this as something I will use with my students. I am thinking maybe even using it as a quick formative assessment once a week. Who knows, but you have definitely inspired me to use sketch notes! Keep up the great work and continue drawing those notes…they are gorgeous and should be framed for your classroom walls!