Meaningful Marks

As Sunni Brown shares in her Doodlers, unite! Links to an external site. TED Talk (6 min. video) sketching and doodling have been shown to improve our comprehension. She shares, "People who doodle when they are exposed to verbal information retain more of that information than their non-doodling counterparts. We think of doodling as something that you do when you lose focus, but in reality it is a preemptive measure to stop you from losing focus." 

Sunni Brown: Doodlers, unite! Links to an external site.

As Rachel Smith shares in her "Drawing in class" TEDxUFM talk below, "I'm not saying that [sketchnoting] is the only way to take notes, or the best way, I'm just saying it's another way to take notes, another option, and for some people it can be very, very helpful." She explains the importance of sketchnoting to information processing, to learning. She says, "Any type of note-taking is designed to help the student take what they're hearing and hook it to their internal frame of reference. That's how learning occurs. You take new information and hook it to old information you already had. When you take notes, it's very possible to write down word for word exactly what the teacher's saying and not understand any of it.. . . When you're using visual note-taking though, you have to listen to what's being said, you have to really hear it, and you have to understand it, because that's the only way you're going to come up with an image that connects what you're hearing with what you already know in your mind." 

Drawing in class: Rachel Smith at TEDxUFM Links to an external site.

 

 

by @SherrillKnezel Links to an external site.

Sylvia Duckworth has a book "How to Sketchnote: A step-by-step Manual for Teachers and Students" where she explores the value of sketchnoting to the learning process. Here is a list of Sylvia's Sketchnoting resources Links to an external site. which she shared publicly on Twitter.