Over my teaching career, I have attended MACUL numerous times and presented several times as well. This year, my experience was a bit different as this time I was a featured presenter! This was something that I will honestly say I was extremely nervous about - something about having the word "featured" in front of presenter! Although my nerves got a workout, I have to say it was one of the most awesome experiences I have had presenting - something I highly recommend for all educators! And I know that I could not have done it without the support of so many friends that I have met and connected with across the state of Michigan and beyond. I have told several people that we all need a Mary Wever in our life - a person who pushes us beyond our comfort zones, believes in you, builds you up, tells you like it is, and seems to know everyone (we joke about this!) and how to connect people with other like minded people. My advice for everyone is to make sure you have your own Mary in your life! One thing I enjoy doing during conferences (especially large conferences when there is a lot of people and things going on in the room) is to sketchnote the speaker and their presentation. This really helps me stay focused on the presentation, key phrases or ideas that I can take away, share with the person as a small thank you for them sharing, and a cool looking reminder of what I learned during that presentation. One thing I always share about sketchnoting is that it is a personal thing and just because you and someone else were sketchnoting the same presentation and captured different ideas and points does not make either one of them wrong. It is what is meaningful to you mixed with your own background knowledge - not about whose looks "prettier" or "better" than another. Everyone has their own style and comes from a different background, so they are bound to be different. Unless we give students a worksheet, we wouldn't expect every single student product to look exactly the same would we? Where is the creativity in that?! For the MACUL conference, I gave two presentations - "Your Greatest Show" and "You CAN Do It - Visual Notetaking with Sketchnotes." Despite the intimidating size of the room, it was a very relaxed atmosphere. One thing I love about the MACUL conference is that it is encouraged to select sessions that fit your learning needs. If you get to a session and it is not quite what you need, feel free to leave and find another session that suits your needs. I personally am not offended when people leave because I have done so myself. For as many people that leave a session, there are always some that join later. The goal is to learn and you need to go to where you will learn best! I had a great time presenting about sketchnotes and what makes your classroom and teaching your greatest show. I presented the two presentations a bit differently with the sketchnote presentation being more hands on (and walking away with a completed sketchnote!). Everyone who attended was great and I can't thank them enough for their participation and making the who experience awesome for everyone in the room (one of the benefits of interactive presentations - it takes the audience to make it successful!). I linked to my presentations below.
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Recently, I had the AMAZING opportunity of doing some graphic recording for the ISTE No Fear Coding Lab. This was such an amazing experience to not only connect with educators who understand the value of coding across the curriculum and are willing to develop themselves professionally to make sure that their students are learning important computational thinking skills. I had the awesome experience of working with Penny Krebiehl and Matt Orley for this conference to capture the keynote speakers and the themes of the breakout sessions. We worked together during the keynote sessions to create live graphic recordings of the content, and then broke up the themes that were covered throughout the remainder of the conference to produce graphic recordings that summed up those themes. I love that some people were able to capture us in the design phase. As this was the first time for me doing this in a different way other than sitting in a chair or on the floor at a conference while someone was speaking, communication was key for us! For many of the keynote presentations, I often created sticky notes with thoughts and ideas and passed them on to Penny and Matt who started designing (with me being an educator it helped to filter the information and they could concentrate on the imagery and lettering). Then at the end I jumped in on the boards to help finish off recording any sticky notes and design. For the themed breakout sessions, I attended sessions about Maker Education, Robotics, and Computer Science Across the Curriculum. I jumped in and out of the sessions trying to capture as much as I could about the themes so that I could translate the information into a recording (well, actually two - I did the Maker Education and Robotics by myself and split the CS Across the Curriculum with Penny). The great part about this was that there was a lot of room for personal creativity, but also a chance to work collaboratively with others to say, "Hey, I need some help!". By the end of the three days, Penny, Matt, and I had shared some long nights drawing and many laughs. I am so grateful that I had the opportunity to work with them! Over the course of 3 days, Penny, Matt, and I spent our days surrounded by paper, pens, pencils, markers and had dirty hands and tired feet at the end of the day. I think all those things are a testament to the work that goes into capturing the content for a conference - but I wouldn't trade it for anything! Final Graphic Recording ImagesOn the final day of the conference, we did not do any graphic recording, but rather covered foam board with our recordings and set up a hallway display on easels. I think the true impact of all the learning that happened over the previous couple of days hit me at that time. I had spent the weekend meeting new people, learning new things, seeing really cool things in practice, and stepped outside my comfort zone to do something new and exciting. It is hard to put into words how I felt when I saw the hallway with all of our recordings displayed. What was even more powerful was watching others who attended and presenters view our work, talking to them about what they learned and shared and how it was represented. It was pretty hard to ignore how the power of imagery can enhance a learning experience. Simply powerful. Recently I was asked to be a guest speaker for a college class about strategies to use with EL students. As my job is centered around educational technology, I started jotting down ideas for a presentation. As I am not one to fully embrace an hour long sit-and-get type of presentation/lecture, I decided to change up my speaking opportunity and turn it in to a Breakout EDU game. I felt that this approach would be more effective in communicating ideas, sharing tools, and modeling a specific method (Breakout EDU) that has been amazing for EL students. Without disclosing too much information about the game (as it is still a work in progress and not a published game!), I decided to include a sketchnote as part the game. Sketchnotes have been amazing for many of the middle and high school students I have worked with as it allows them to bring their verbal and visual worlds together in a simple sketch. I thought I would share out the sketchnote, because I think the information is applicable to anyone (not just those playing the game). To create the sketchnote, I consulted with the amazing Christi Gilbert, NBCT (http://teachlearnreflect.weebly.com/), who is an EL Instructional Specialist at our 3-5 elementary school. She provide ten different ways that teachers can support EL students in their classroom. I love the simple suggestions she offered and how they can be easily implemented right away. In addition to the suggestions, she also provided some links to resources that might be helpful and expand on the suggestions. Image Sources:
If you are unable to view the presentation below, please click here.
As mentioned in the presentation, students used the Monarch Butterfly Life Cycle video to practice their sketchnoting.
Sharing Time!
As I always ask teachers to participant in this presentation and share what they did with their students, I like to do the same myself. It is also fun when you see that you are part of the learning objectives for the day!
Student Work
As I have done previously, when I come and speak to students about sketchnotes, I feel that doing a gallery walk at the end may be one of the most powerful parts of my time with them. They have an opportunity to see what their classmates designed and see a visual representation of their thought process (and see what their teacher created!). I always tell them that there is not a "right way" or "wrong way" to sketchnote, but the purpose of our exercises are to learn to step outside our comfort zone and learn to use both text and images to represent our thoughts and ideas.
Below are some pictures I collected throughout my day in the classroom. It is always amazing to see student growth (throughout the hour) and their amazing creativity! Tweets from the Day
Recently, I had two middle school ELA teachers ask me if I would be willing to come into their classrooms and talk to their students about sketchnotes. You bet I will! I love talking about sketchnotes!
So, over the course of two days, I was in two middle school classrooms and did the same presentation for each hour I visited. Earlier in the year, I had spoken to a couple of other classes about sketchnotes and new there would be some overlap with the students I would be presenting to, so I changed up my presentation a little so that those students who had already heard me talk about sketchnotes would still have an opportunity to try new things. It is always nice when you get to spend a day with students and you have a nice welcome on the board! :)
As mentioned in the presentation, students used the 5 Frozen Facts About Winter video to practice their sketchnoting.
Sharing Time!
As I always ask teachers to participant in this presentation and share what they did with their students, I like to do the same myself. On the left is an image of my text notes from watching the video and on the right are my sketchnotes.
Teacher Work
When I come into classrooms to talk about sketchnotes, I always encourage the teacher(s) to follow along and do the activities with students. I feel this is especially important (especially if the concept of sketchnotes and visual note-taking is new to the teacher), that the students have the opportunity to see their teacher learning alongside them. The students always flock to see what their teacher(s) have sketched and it opens up to interesting dialogue about what they were sketchnoting about. This is also a great opportunity for students to see their teachers as learners and not always "knowing everything."
Below are some images I captured of what the teachers sketched during my time in their classrooms. Student Work
When I come and speak to students about sketchnotes, I feel that doing a gallery walk at the end may be one of the most powerful parts of my time with them. They have an opportunity to see what their classmates designed and see a visual representation of their thought process. It is always interesting to me how there are students who gravitate to different representations when doing their notes - some mostly bullet points, others full of images and few words, and another group that lies between those two groups. I always tell them that there is not a "right way" or "wrong way" to sketchnote, but the purpose of our exercises are to learn to step outside our comfort zone and learn to use both text and images to represent our thoughts and ideas.
Below are some pictures I collected throughout my 2 days in the classrooms. It is always amazing to see student growth (throughout the hour) and their amazing creativity!
Recently, I was asked to come speak to a group of 10th grade English students about sketchnoting. I love when I hear excitement and buzz going on about something and I am always happy to share!
As Halloween was just three days away, I did my Halloween sketchnote presentation for the students. They seemed very intrigued about the concept and the students were so excited to see their teacher actively participating, drawing, and taking notes. It was so fun to watch this group of students start out at the beginning of the class period wondering what this was all about and at the end being excited, sharing, and talking about what they took notes on. If you are unable to view the presentation below, please click here.
As these students were older than ones I have presented to in the past, I chose a video that was <intentionally> a little more difficult. I wanted to give them a bit of a challenge! If you are unable to view the video below, please click here.
Below are some student examples from the video above. Many of the students said that the video went really fast and it was hard to keep up, but I think they did a fantastic job!
Some of the classes were very diligent in their sketchnoting, so we were able to a couple of fun activities at the end. We did some head- to-head word challenges (in 30 seconds, write the word given by the teacher and illustrate it) as well as some exit slips.
In one of the head to head challenges, I was given a lesson of my own by the teacher. She was given the word "Rooster" and this is what she came up with in 30 seconds. It wasn't even a competition for her!
Last week I was able to spend the day co-teaching with an 8th grade ELA teacher focusing on using sketchnotes with her students. After meeting with her earlier in the week, we were able to talk about her goals and intentions with using sketchnotes with her students. It was great for me to hear about what she wanted to do with sketchnotes in her upcoming lessons focused around 9/11 and how an introduction to this type of note-taking would benefit her students. I was so excited to share this concept with her students and see what they would come up with!
As part of working with her, I created a presentation focused around a non-content subject - Fall and Halloween. I figured this would give her students a fun way to practice sketching, doodling, and pulling key concepts out of a video while annotating the concepts with drawing. It was so fun to see some students so excited about taking notes and being given an opportunity to make their notes personal and meaningful to them. Supporting Resources
Below is the presentation I used with the students for introducing sketchnotes. I also included a companion handout for students to take notes and practice on as we were working through the introduction of the sketchnoting process.
If you are unable to view the presentation below, please click here.
Student Sketchnote Gallery
I took many pictures of the students sketchnoted today, and there were just so many awesome ones to share! Below is a sampling of some of the notes from students throughout the day.
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