Rachel Smith: "Drawing in class" @ TEDxUFM (2012)

Senior Consultant and the Director of Digital Facilitation Services for The Grove Consultants Internationa in San Francisco," Rachel Smith is a visual facilitator, has led her own graphic design company, and continues to explore the intersection of education and technology (passages taken from the description of Smith's TEDx Talk).  As such, she proposes that visual note-taking - a record system consisting of pictures in addition to words - is an important learning tool...not for dyslexic students but for all children.  Smith elaborates upon her thoughts in a talk given at TEDxUFM (@TEDxUFM) called "Drawing in class":

Visual note-taking opens the door for more playful connections between information, for students to use their imaginations in an activity that can often be very passive (note-taking).  It also helps students to create a personal visual memory aid that they can study from later, that they can look at and [use to] tell themselves the story again.  When a teacher is teaching, what they're doing, really, is telling a story about something they're passionate about.  And when a student takes visual notes, what they're doing is making that story visible.

We're going to go over three simple steps that will get you set on this road, get you started.  And the first one is to choose a tool that works for you.  The second one is to start building up that mental library of images (that I talked about).  And the third one is to really practice listening and capturing the key points.

When you've done visual notes, the way that you tell if you did it right is if you can look at your notes and tell back the story that you heard from that speaker.  Then you did it right.  There's all there is to it.  There's no more than that.  Can you look at it and recall the story?

What do you think? Do you employ visual note-taking? Please post in the comments section below.

Description of 1st image:  A sample of Rachel Smith's visual note-taking strategies.  Photo located at nsanc.org.  Kildonan and its IP program claim no ownership over this picture.