#Sketchnotes | Doodling that really helps you remember

If you went back to all of my notebooks from high school and college you would notice a lot of doodling. It wasn't random though. It was a series of pictures I created to help me remember more deeply the content being presented. There might be a crude White House next to something that was supposed to be the Washington Monument as we were learning about the Executive Branch. You'd probably find a lot of flames and snow flakes in my Chemistry notes as I tried to keep straight whether certain elements exploded or froze when they reacted with one another.

What was once perceived as random scrawlings or worse yet time wasting is proving to be an effect way for learners of all ages to help remember material more effectively.

Seeing some of the great stuff Karen Bosch was doing with sketchnotes during the 2015 MACUL conference made me realize I had been on to something since the mid 1980's. Below are slides from the introductory presentation she gives on sketchnotes.

Digital Sketchnotes 101 from Karen Bosch

Susan Bowdoin wrote this past September on the Discovery Education blog about sketchnotes as an instructional strategy. Personally I like how she ties sketchnoting into the research of Robert Marzano that shows non-linguistic representation plays a powerful role in making learning stick.

Visual or graphic note taking, also called Sketchnoting, is gaining greater popularity as a strategy for increasing engagement in lectures, seminars and video presentations. When sketchnoting, learners use visual means to analyze information, make comparisons and develop analogies to better understand and communicate what they’ve learned. This requires higher level thinking. It is also directly related to Robert Marzano’s research on the significant positive affects that nonlinguistic representations have on student achievement.

Read all of Susan's tips on SOS: Sketchnotes at the Discovery Education blog. She not only provides practical strategies for implementing the strategy but also delivers some app suggestions for making this digital.

Wow, and to think all of the mean looks I got from Mr. Stuyver in Trigonometry for "doodling" too much were all for naught. Those weren't doodles; they were sketchnotes. Maybe if he hadn't discouraged my use of non-linguistic representation, I would have remembered more from his class.

Sketchnote on, my friends.