#30GoalsEdu: Sketchnote it

#30GoalsEdu: Sketchnote it
Hurray!! The new cycle of the 30 goals Challenge is here everyone and I’m super excited about it! I love that we get to try our hands on new goals, but also that we can revisit older goals and breathe new life into them. I also feel grateful for this amazingly supportive community of educators I belong to and for Shelly for giving me the opportunity to suggest a goal this year. For more information about the goals, click here and here.
I’m a doodle enthusiast, so when Shelly uploaded the goals I knew the first one I would like to try would be sketchnoting. I first found out about it last year when I came across Christina Rebuffet’s notes for the 2014 IATEFL Conference (you can see her posts and notes here and here. Christina also wrote a special Q&A post about sketchnoting which you can read here). Although I’ve been a doodler all my life, I have to admit sketchnoting seemed different and quite challenging. I always draw with my kids and we’ve often created mindmaps together, but sketchnoting was something I hadn’t tried before.
Before starting, I decided to look for tools and inspiration. First stop at Sylvia’s Duckworth’s blog, one of the best sketchnoters out there, which is full of useful information and tips. Googling around a bit more, I found Kathy Schrock’s site which is a sketchnoter’s paradise! And now it was time I gave it a go!
I must admit I was disappointed to discover that the best sketchnoting apps are only available for iOS which meant I would have to resort to the ones available for Android. The one I tried is INKredible.
If you’re interested in using it, I suggest you watch this short video first and then go on to experiment with it.
I decided to prepare a sketchnote on 6 ways you can build student confidence in the classroom. As this was my first attempt at sketchnoting I wanted to keep it as simple and straight-forward as possible. I have to say it took me a lot of time to get there, but I think I understood some of the main principles of sketchnoting. My main difficulties had to do with the app I used. INKredible is indeed an excellent note-taking app, but I feel sketchnoting is way too demanding on it. First of all, there are no ready-made shapes/objects which you can use and the variety of fonts is also quite limited. As a result, all my drawings and writings were done by finger which makes the final result a bit sloppy to look at. I’ve also prepared a paper version of my sketch notes, so that you can compare and contrast between the two.
Although it takes a lot of time to learn how to use the app (which I’m sure is the same for other sketchnoting tools), I loved the whole process. I will hopefully try the iOS tools as well, but one thing is for sure: I’m a sketchnoting addict! 🙂

The INKredible version
Paper Version

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *