The very first talk of my very first ARCLIB conference made me feel like I was in the right place. Rachel Burnham promised to teach us a new skill, a different approach to taking notes, with images instead of just words. One of its applications is keeping the mind fresh, creative, busy and awake during meetings, which can be – let’s be honest here – mind-numbingly exhausting.
The advantages of (rather quickly) drawing images, accompanied by as few words as possible, are manyfold but the few that stood out for me were: more memorable for people who have a more visual style of learning and the fact that sketchnoting dares you to summarize concepts or statements with one image. Too often notes of meetings and lectures have a short lifespan and don’t get revisited; sketchnoting dares you to make an effort to create memorable notes that speak, even at first glance, which you might keep and revisit.
The way Rachel approached teaching us this skill was very well thought trough: starting with baby steps and reassuring us we didn’t need to be great artists and that writing words and using letters is already in a way drawing. Using only letters we drew a few simple figures. We quickly expanded our skills by drawing often used images as people, a laptop, a book and before I knew it I was sketchnoting the sketchnoting workshop.
I noticed the simple joy of using colours, markers and different techniques. As a child my pencase would have crayons, markers in the wildest colours; now I often have just one blue pen. This workshop has made me dig up my old pencase and it is now a default part of my backpack and has a place on my desk. I’m actually looking forward to my next meeting so I can release these newly resurrected skills to make notes I actually care about.
Report and sketchnotes by Gertjan Debie – University of Leuven, Belgium
Leave a Reply