Visual Note-Taking for Educators: A Teacher's Guide to Student Creativity

by Wendi Pillars

A step-by-step guide for teachers to the benefits of visual note-taking and how to incorporate it in their classrooms. We've come a long way from teachers admonishing students to put away their drawings and take traditional long-form notes. Let's be note-taking is boring and it isn't always the most effective way to retain information. This book is a guide for teachers about getting your students drawing and sketching to learn visually. Whether in elementary school or high school, neuroscience has shown that visual learning is a very effective way to retain information. The techniques in this book will help you work with your students in novel ways to retain information. Visual note-taking can be used with diverse learners; all ages; and those who have no drawing experience. Teachers are provided with a library of images and concepts to steal, tweak, and use in any way in their classrooms. The book is liberally illustrated with student examples from elementary and high school students alike.

Genres: Teaching, Nonfiction

192 pages, Paperback

First published November 23, 2015

Reviews

[Matthew Noe · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was looking for a sort-of... introduction to sketchnoting and grabbed this at the library. While it is fine and all, I am not the right audience for the language here. It is targeted to elementary educators I think and the upbeat, constant praise and energetic language just turned me off.

[Heather Sobek · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this book to be really interesting! There are definitely ideas presented here that I can take and use immediately in my classroom. I appreciated the brain research that backed up the author's ideas. I feel like it's too often that education books present ideas that seem good without really backing them up with evidence that they're best practice.

The format of the book (wide and short) really bugged me, though. It made it feel hard to read.

[Jimmy In]

All educators should read this book. It is full of tips of how teaching and learning can be improved through educational sketches.

[Debs Taylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent tool for teachers interested in helping students take good, meaningful notes while engaging with, and applying, the content. Pillars goes to great lengths to show how her ideas are built on current brain research.

[Sherry Liptak · Rating 5 out of 5]

Simply put, Wendi's book gives the research-based whys and whats and hows of sketchnoting and visual note-taking. Fun to read... debunks myths ^_^ I was looking for a book that was more informative as most of the others I'd found were more about how to sketch.

[Steve Silbert · Rating 5 out of 5]

Insightful and relevant

Im an adult who is not a teacher of children. Nevertheless, Wendi walks you through insights as to why adults are the way they are. As a concept, sketchnoting can be used by adults for the same reasons that edu-sketching can be used to help children.

[Kevin Hodgson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great resource for sketch-noting .. with examples and theory/science behind how art enhances memory and understanding