Terry Heick, "10 Brilliant Examples Of Sketch Notes: Notetaking For The 21st Century"

Graphic recording by Jonny Goldstein, envisualize.com

Is a picture worth a thousand words?  Perhaps when it comes to note taking, yes.  My colleague Matt Awaya shared "10 Brilliant Examples of Sketch Notes: Notetaking for the 21st Century" by Terry Heick, an article on graphic notetaking.  While employing images in order to remember ideas for future reference is nothing new, I suspect that traditional note taking, which is linguistic in nature, arguably lacks the punch of visuals when it comes to thinking, aiding retention, or sharing ideas with other people.

While sketch notes like the ones shared in Heick's article or say, RSA Animate, are highly intimidating because of their sheer gorgeousness--face it, these are polished end-products, after all, done by professional graphic artists--there's a lot of value in using drawing as scaffolding for thinking, a valuable educational tool, and a means for differentiated learning.  In my classroom, for example, instead of having students construct a personal narrative assignment via outlining and/or writing a rough draft, I encourage them to sketch pictures and storyboard their work before they even type a word.  Same with poems.  It's a surprisingly simple tool, creating stories via pictures, but amazingly, it frees students to work out the essentials of their story and the narrative framework, without agonizing over words.  Also, because powerful writing engages all the senses, students literally must visualize first what they're trying to paint in words and imagine the details.  I also employ the strategy of "Sketch to Stretch", having students capture their understanding of literature via pictures, as well as words.