I’ve never been much of a doodler, at least not that I can remember. I’ve also never taken a formal art or drawing class. We did occasionally draw while I was at school in St. Lucia. I remember drawing a girl with ribbons when I was in grade 1. My grandmother had the drawing. It was better than a stick figure, right down to ribbons in her hair. But it’s been a lot of time between Grade 1 and now. I’ve played around with Sketchnoting, but I’m not very good at it (yet). I do believe, however, that it is worth working on and developing.
Last week, the other tech coaches and I presented our weekly tech tastes on data visualizations and graphical presentation. We shared some online data visualizations, many of which let users access the data sets for further analysis. We also looked at tools for making a timeline, infographic, drawing or Sketchnote. The tools used were a computer, iPad or paper, depending on the participants and their interests. We chose this topic because we think that visual literacy is important, and the use of tools for visual representation honors the capacities and strengths of ourselves and our students.
Here are some links to explore and use.
Data Visualization
These links display big data sets. Some of them also allow you to download the data sets.
| Tool | Description |
| Gapminder | Income per year graphed versus life expectancy in years for all countries. |
| Google Ngram Viewer | Search to find out how a word or phrase has occurred in a corpus of books over several years. You can download the data set of the n-grams. |
| OneZoom | Explore the tree of life to see how all life on earth is related. All of the information is on a single page and you zoom in to see details. |
| Visualizing Season 1 of Buffy | For fun, you could visualize how long each character of Buffy spent on screen. |
| World Mapper | A collection of world maps on various subjects, including over 200 countries. |
| Google Trends | Explore what people are searching for at different times. You can download the data. |
| Google Correlate | “Google Correlate uses web search activity data to find queries with a similar pattern to a target data series. The results can be viewed on the Google Correlate website or downloaded as a CSV file for further analysis.” Here’s a comic to explain it. |
Tools for presenting data
| Tool | Description |
| Wordle | Visualize meaning with a word cloud. Try this sample text (Arnie Bieber’s article, “Nature of Nurture”). |
| Timeline JS | Easily create interactive timelines (including video) beginning with a Google spreadsheet template. |
| Hstry | Another option for creating timelines. Friendly to elementary use. See some examples from the website or a grade 4 test. |
| Canva | Tool for creating infographics (and other graphics) on the web or iPad. Click “create a design” and scroll down for infographic layouts. |
| Pic Collage for Kids (iPad only) | The easiest introduction to visual presentations. Use a combination of text, images and stickers to create a presentation. Work with a grid or freestyle. |
| Easel.ly | Another great graphics creation tool – uses a groups feature, which is useful especially for elementary. Some examples of use. |
| Adobe Illustrator Draw | iPad app for drawing – you can import images and use layers. |
| Sketchnoting | (on paper!) The link is to a slideshow about sketchnoting with many links, by Sylvia Duckworth |
Reference Books
- Ed Emberley, Make a World – shows in nonverbal step-by-step diagrams how you can draw anything with simple lines and geometric shapes – great classroom resource.
- Edward Tufte, Beautiful Evidence – principles of information design, presented beautifully.
- Mike Rohde, The Sketchnote Handbook: the Illustrated Guide to Visual Notetaking – how to make sketchnotes
- Brandy Agerbeck, The Graphic Facilitator’s Guide – how to make and use sketchnotes for meeting recording and facilitation
- Digital Sketchnotes for Visualizing Learning course on iTunes U
Cross posted at http://blogs.isp.cz/esit/2016/05/16/try-your-hand-at-doodling/