Doodling…An Essential Skill to Develop & Support in our Students?

There is something about doodling…illustrating… as you are listening to, absorbing and reflecting about content or an experience. I have questions…?

• Does doodling calm a mind, that is constantly bouncing of its walls?
• Does doodling help one focus on auditory material?
• Can doodling help clarify content?
• Does doodling only work for the artistically inclined? (What if I can’t draw?)
• Is doodling only beneficial for the visual learner?

I have been wanting to find out about these questions for a while now. During an experiment with a fifth grade class last school year, I showed them parts of Ken Robinson’s TED talk “Changing Education Paradigm” that had been animated by RSA Animate. You might think that this age group would not have been interested in that topic, but surprisingly they were fascinated and begged me to watch more of the video clip. I wrote about the different jobs students took, including the one of a Doodler/Illustrationist, as they watched another movie about the American Revolution. Take a look at the post The Official Scribe: It’s All About Learning Styles & Collaboration.

My little informal experiment showed that students, who doodled their notes, retained more details of the content they heard and were able to narrate and explain content, connections and sequence better than their counterparts who took text with bullet type notes.

In another post, titled Third Graders- Called Upon As Experts, I mentioned the “Doodler” using an iPad to illustrate during a Skype video conference.

A few days ago, I clicked on a link from Twitter, which took me to the following TED Talk: Doodlers Unite! by Sunni Brown

In this short five minute video Sunni answers many of my initial questions I posed above.

She makes a point of the importance of doodling as a means to use visual language and talks about the perceived notion that doodling is too often NOT considered serious learning. She advocates that doodling has a

profound impact how we can process information and solve problems.

How can we, as educators, ignore this statement above? Processing information and solving problems are critical 21st century skills!!!

How can we not take advantage of Sunni’s definition of Doodling below?

Sunni defines Doodling as:

to make spontaneous marks to help yourself think

Take the five minutes to listen to Sunni and maybe you will doodle on a piece of paper or on your iPad about what YOU think? How can you connect what you are hearing to YOUR classroom and YOUR students and all of OUR learning. How can me make doodling acceptable in schools and even take a step further by strategically teaching and supporting it?

TED Talk- Raghava KK: Shake up your story

Screenshot of TED Slide by Raghava KK

This is a short TED talk by Raghava KK, the illustrator of the iPad book POP-IT – Raghava KK Inc. This video is not a commercial about the artist’s iPad book though, but shares a message about the importance of raising our children with PERSPECTIVE.

In his book, children can shake the iPad to change the configuration of a family (gay parents, lesbian parents of heterosexual parents). Raghava KK’s vision is to create books that teach history differently. He wants to create books that talk about historic events, such as Indian Independence. You read the book about the Indian perspective, shake the iPad and you will get Pakistan’s perspective, shake it again and get the British’ perspective.

I love the concept… my wheels are turning how to transfer that to the classroom with students… I know teachers are using multiple perspective storytelling in the Language Arts classroom, such as having students retell a fairy tale from the perspective of the villain (wolf, witch, etc) instead of the hero or Edgar Allan Poe’s Tell-Tale Heart podcast to teach author’s point of view.

How can we transfer this to social studies, science and other subject areas?

Creative Commons Kiwi

The following Creative Commons video has been circulating on Twitter and on many other blogs. I wanted to share it with Langwitches’ readers. Being aware and knowledgeable about copyright and the different licenses, including Creative Commons, is imperative.
Take a look at the following Copyright related posts on Langwitches too:

• Backchanneling-Movie Watching-Note Taking- Information Scribes
• Creative Commons: What Every Educator Needs to Know