IMAGO Conference Centre Friday 22nd-Saturday 23rd March 2019
This last weekend I have attended the annual ALL conference, Language World, in Loughborough. It’s been as inspiring and thought provoking as usual and it’s been lovely to see friends old and new. Given the current political atmosphere, and the issues facing languages in particular, it was great to find that a spirit of optimism prevailed and that there was a resolve to ride the storm together and come out the other side stronger amongst speaking and delegates alike.
Once more I was asked to be ‘official Sketchnoter’ which basically involves sketchnoting (which I’d do anyway!) but in real time to be posted as soon as the session was completed on a display board outside the main conference room as well as on Twitter. A little more intense and stressful than doing it in my notebook and tidying it up and making it pretty later! Still, I enjoy the challenge and it was again good to eavesdrop on people admiring the sketchnote display without knowing I’d done them.
Professor David Crystal – I could listen to him for hours! Lots of links to look up here!
Noelia Rivas and Sara Montero talk CLIL in their primary language classrooms. www.networkforlanguageslondon.org.uk/resources/ http://francaispourloulous.blogspot.com/
Those of you who follow me on Twitter or have ever met me will know that I like to sketchnote whenever I attend conferences or complete professional development activities. In fact, you’ll find many of them on this website too!
Sketchnotes are rich visual notes created from a mix of handwriting, drawings, hand-drawn typography, shapes, and visual elements like arrows, boxes, and lines. (Mike Rohde)
Well, one of my sketchnote inspirations is Sylvia Duckworth. Her definition:
Sketchnoting, or visual note-taking, is an effective and fun way to take notes using doodles and text. It has many other benefits such as increased focus and engagement in class, improved comprehension and memory retention, helps develop creative thinking skills and allows students an alternative way to display their learning and make connections to course content. It has a calming and relaxing effect too!
You may not have met Sylvia Duckworth; perhaps you’ve never heard the name before, but I’m sure you’ve seen her sketchnotes! Recognise either of these?
Sylvia collected some of her beautiful sketchnotes in a book nearly two years ago called Sketchnotes for Educators which features 100 of her favourites in print with links to download and print them out for your classroom. Here’s the trailer!
A month or so ago I heard that Sylvia was releasing a new book entitled How to Sketchnote: A step-by-step Manual for Teacher and Students. Very exciting news! Just as exciting was news of #sketchnotefever, a 21 day sketchnote challenge. Each day from October 23rd to November 12th, Sylvia is posting a 3 minute video that shows how to draw icons, fonts, banners and bullets with the aim of building up a visual dictionary for sketchnoting.
I joined in as I like a challenge and I felt that it would do my sketchnoting a good boost in advance of the Practical Pedagogies conference in Cologne. Each day I’ve had a go at the task and posted my results on Twitter and Instagram. Sylvia loves seeing all the #sketchnotefever posts and is really good at commenting on them all! And she’s really kindly let me have a copy of her new book ahead of publication – and it’s BRILLIANT!
It explains what sketchnoting is, compares analogue (the way I do it) and digital (the way Sylvia does it, using an iPad and Procreate app) sketchnoting and then offers exercises and activities to practice ‘doodling’, build up a vocabulary of visuals, and learn how to do all the ‘other bits’ like banners, bullets and fonts. I’m particularly liking the icon section on p26-27, and will be spending lots of time on p54 practicing animals, and the stick people on p51-2. I may even start a ‘Doodle club’ using it!
So – two bits of advice!
Use #sketchnotefever as a way of giving sketchnoting a go. It’s a great introduction and by the end you’ll see that you really don’t have to be an artist to do it!
Get a copy of How to Sketchnote: A step-by-step Manual for Teacher and Students. Whether you’re planning on using it as a tool to help teach your pupils how to sketchnote, or as a personal ‘how to’ manual, it’s well worth the purchase as you get links to images for projection as well as links and QR codes to videos. And if you order before November 13th, you get bonus features too. Click here to find out about it.
PS I’ll post all of my #sketchnotefever sketchnotes at the end of the challenge in one post but check out Twitter or Instagram if you can’t wait! If you search for the hashtag you’ll find lots of other people’s sketches too!
As I said in my previous post, I’ve just come back from the Practical Pedagogies conference in Toulouse. Last year I attended the inaugural #pracped conference and presented about Using technology to enhance primary language teaching and learning As you can see from this post which charts my impressions, I vowed I wanted to attend the next one. And that post also explains what I was asked to speak on this time.
I have, over the last 18 months, discovered sketch noting or visual note taking to be an excellent tool. I sketch noted last year’s conference and several people commented that i should do a workshop on it. So I did!
Below is my presentation. You can’t read the notes so I’ve added some below that.
I’d also like to highlight certain things:
Slide 7 in the presentation is a slide deck of the development of my sketch noting but only the last slide is showing. You can see more of my sketch notes in my Flickr album Sketchnotes – bit.ly/lisibosketch – where you can see for yourself how my style has developed!
There are several books that I recommend in the presentation; if you click on the book covers, I’ve linked to where you can purchase them. I wanted to highlight the free iBook Sketchnoting for teaching and learning that is downloadable from iTunes (see slide 39). I didn’t know that it was finished in time to share it at the conference but @lanclassrach (one of the authors) put me right and shared the link with the description “the book is designed by teachers for teachers to help them get going with sketch noting.” Recommended reading, especially if you want to know more about using technology to sketch note.
I wanted to highlight one of the blog post mentioned on slide34 – 4 quick myth busters about visual notes in the classroom. It’s a good summation of a large part of Wendi’s book and gives practical answers to questions that are often asked about getting pupils to use visual note taking.
Slide 38 is Sylvia Duckworth’s guide to sketch noting digitally. She has further advice since then and says ‘ I draw on the iPad with Procreate app (tutorials here and here) and the Musemee Notier Prime Stylus (If you buy one, make sure to get extra replacement tips as well). Thanks to Sylvia for giving me permission to share her sketch notes and for her advice!
As I finished my workshop I discovered a new Twitter account just started by the lady who made the image on slide 51, so please follow @sketchadoodle for more beautiful visual notes.
Finally, proof that you just need to try – one of the delegates went straight from my session and had a go during the next workshop. Here’s the evidence! Well done @asperatus07!
Brad Ovenell-Carter says “Sketchnotes are intelligent note-taking. The note-taking process is normally passive. But with sketchnotes, you don’t write anything down until your thoughts are there. It’s already digested.” https://plus.google.com/communities/115990332552316650304
“When you draw an object, the mind becomes deeply, intensely attentive,” says the designer Milton Glaser, an author of a 2008 monograph titled Drawing Is Thinking. “And it’s that act of attention that allows you to really grasp something, to become fully conscious of it.”
Arguably, making graphic marks predates verbal language, so whether as a simple doodle or a more deliberate free-hand drawing, the act is essential to expressing spontaneous concepts and emotions.
What’s more, according to a study published in the Journal of Applied Cognitive Psychology, doodlers find it easier to recall dull information (even 29 percent more) than non-doodlers, because the latter are more likely to daydream.
