Incorporating Drawing and Design into Learning
Sketchnotes
Here are two sketchnotes that I made in class today. The first is on the benefits of taking notes on paper. The second is on learning french words related to travel.
The purpose of these sketchnotes is to help quickly retain information by forcing yourself to summarize what you are learning. Drawing and text together engage multimedia learning practices, leading to better retention of information.
I think that sketchnoting would work excellently for a grade 2-3 class. At this age, they still have trouble forming sentences, let alone taking notes on a topic. If they can use images and incorporate words they see from the board in a sketchnote, they could almost have proper “notes.”
What is SAMR?
The SAMR evaluation method helps to analyze the usefulness of technology adaptations in a classroom. The acronym stands for Substitution, Augmentation, Modification, and Redefinition. For instance, the use of iPads in schools falls into two domains of SAMR. iPads can be simply used as a substitution for a pen and paper, but they are also capable of creating perfect shapes and imputing images that can be classified as augmentation. There would be no modification or redefinition in these cases.
Here is a link for more on SAMR
One thing to take away from SAMR is that if you can do something without substituting technology, then it might be best to keep it simple. It is important to evaluate what specific benefits using technology brings, so that money and time are not wasted creating a redundant resource.