Visual note taking for artistic students

I have recently posted a discussion about a variety of tools and techniques that I brought back from my Kenan experience.  For this post, I want to focus on a single technique and how it has affected both myself and my students.

Being a teacher at a magnet school where the focus is the arts but lacking artistic skill, though not artistic interest, has long been a problem for me.  Students often expect all of our elective teachers to be artistically inclined.  For me, this has meant admitting to using stick figures and shying away from showing anything I draw to my students.  Thanks to talking with other Kenan Fellows who introduced me to using sketchnotes, this is changing.

Student proudly displaying their completed sketchnotes from an earlier class

I have now used sketchnotes a couple of times during lecture.  While the initial introduction of the technique was met with some trepidation on the part of the students, I have continued using it and the popularity has grown in my classes.  Students who have told me they would write notes in notebooks but never visit that information again.  The notes were taken as a requirement, not to serve any purpose.  They then tell me this is not the case when using sketchnotes.  And, I have heard the same response come from student parents during parent-teacher conferences.

My students tend to draw the notes in pencil as I lecture the material.  Once they get home, they will open their sketchbook up, trace over the initial sketches making the marks permanent or adjusting the picture to be more accurate than their initial, quick sketch and finally finish the images off by adding some color.  They will also flush out more detail by comparing what they did in class with the provided slideshow that I share online after each lecture.  So, they are reviewing material without even realizing they are doing it!  And this added and unexpected studying has shown up in student quiz grades.

Lecture given on computer hardware as sketchnotes

I have also used sketchnotes to replace my traditional lecture using PowerPoint slideshows.  I continue to bounce my lecture off the state provided material, but my lecture has become considerably more dynamic and organic.  I draw on the board, color coding information and filling in informational blanks instead of just talking in front of the class.  As a result, my students are more engaged in the discussion than ever before.  To the left is the lecture I gave to my students this morning about computer hardware.  The key concepts (definitions and kinds of computer devices) were directly bounced off the provided slideshow and interpreted to provide graphic representation instead of a series of words or phrases.  However, the students asked better and more pointed questions about the material and used my graphic as a point of reference when they did ask questions.  I will later share the lecture slideshow on my class website for reference purposes.

Taking notes during lecture on computer hardware

Another interesting thing is that the student sketchnotes are not simply copied the way I draw my notes during lecture.  To the right is the initial notes taken by one student on this same material.  It is clear that he had to understand and interpret the information to record it in a manner that works for him.  He will certainly go back into them tonight or soon and flush them out more with color, additional information and organization.

So, while I have learned a lot of useful tools and techniques as a Kenan Fellow, I seem to keep coming back to sketchnotes as being exceptionally useful in my classroom.  I definitely encourage others to try this technique in their classes if they haven’t already!