The Doodle Revolution

The Doodle Revolution
by Sunni Brown (her "Doodlers, unite!" TED talk is here)
Penguin, 2014
review copy from the public library

You could probably read/skim this book at five different times in your life and get five different personal life lessons from it. My big take-away this time around is that doodling is not bad. Doodling is a way to think and learn:

I want to teach my students some doodling tools so that we can doodlearn (yes, I just made that word up!) together.

But what this book gave me for right now (for today and this week and the rest of the summer) was a reminder that I don't have to wait until I'm an amazing artist to have fun with doodling. I learned to doodle new, more expressive stick figures, and use eye positions, noses, mouths and eyebrows to create a variety of more emotive faces:

And I returned to my TED challenge and illustrated notetaking by opening the TED app on my phone, scanning the featured talks, finding one with NOTICE in the title (my One Little Word for 2015) and received this excellent message from the universe:

Tony Fadell: "The first secret of design is...noticing"

Catching up on TED Talks

My goal of a TED talk a week with illustrated notes got sideswiped. I decided to give an hour or so of my snow day yesterday to get caught up.

One thing I'm playing around with in my notes is what kind of pencils/pens I use. I love my Crayola Twistable colored pencils, but they slow me down. I can't press very hard with them.

So I took some notes with just pencil, but they weren't pretty and fun.

I switched over to Flair pens, but the only colors I have at home are pink, purple, fuschia and black. I think I'm going to have to spring for a complete set of Flair pens. The bold colors really brought my thinking to life.

It's all about the writing tool sometimes, isn't it?

My first few videos were from TED-Ed. I'm still waiting to hear if my application to start a TED-Ed club has been accepted.

I began with my brain:
What Percentage of Your Brain Do You Use?





We are studying the rotation and revolution of the earth, so I thought this one was fascinating...and a little bit mind-blowing: How Fast Are You Moving Right Now?




Our fifth graders are just finishing up writing persuasive essays. I need to show my class Want to be an Activist?




Mandy asked me in a tweet how I choose which TED talks to watch. I told her that I don't really choose them, they come to me. The TED-Ed videos above came in an email newsletter. Here are a few more I watched today and where they came from:

Doodlers, Unite came to me from Lisa at steps & staircases. I have a student who will be very happy that I will no longer nag her to stop doodling all over her papers!

Joe Smith: How to Use a Paper Towel came to me from Charla Rae at school. Sadly, we can't encourage children to shake their hands 12 times in order to only take one paper towel, but if all the adults in the world would do this, we could save 571,230,000 POUNDS of paper every year. What do you think...can you try to reduce your paper towel usage by even one per wash? Let's be part of the solution...starting with paper towels.

And then I came full circle back to the mind with Andy Puddicombe: All it Takes is 10 Mindful Moments, which came to me from Franki. Yes, Franki, it does go with my OLW: BREATHE. What I'm wondering is -- does it have to be 10 continuous minutes? Can I get the same effect if I spread my meditation out over the course of a day, spending one minute at a time BREATHING and truly focusing on the moment at hand without rushing on to the next thing or the next thought? I'm going to try it!

Last Week's TED Talk

You might remember that I recently challenged myself to watch a TED talk every week and take illustrated notes. Here are my notes from last week's video: Susan Cain: The Power of Introverts. Susan Cain wrote Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking  

Before I watched the video, I thought about that word power. When I considered my own introversion, power was not a word I would use to describe it. I thought of pain, loneliness, uncertainty and hesitation.

By the end of the video, I was at peace with my introversion. 

I saw the truth in what Cain said about introverted leaders -- that they achieve better outcomes because they let employees run with their own ideas rather than always trying to micromanage and put their stamp on everything.

I thought hard about what she says is a prevalent attitude in education that the best students are extroverts. Do I believe this? Does my classroom look like I believe this? In her call to action, Cain made three points that I will take to heart:

1. Stop the madness for constant group work. Students need privacy, need to experience freedom, and learn to deal with autonomy.
2. Go to the wilderness. Have revelations. Unplug.
3. Know yourself. Accept yourself. Play to your own strengths rather than those you perceive society values.

Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking -- Kindle edition is only $2.99!

Celebrate!

Check out all the celebration posts at RuthAyresWrites.com -- thanks, Ruth!

This week, I'm celebrating all the learning that comes from even a casual, intermittent relationship with FaceBook and Twitter.

I'm celebrating Paul Hankins, who posted his illustrated note taking of TED talks. I followed Paul's link to the talk and found the free (FREE!) TED app (iTunes / Android).

Then I took my first illustrated notes as I watched/listened to Diana Nyad (one of my swimming heroines, in close second place behind Lynne Cox) tell about her history-making Cuba to Florida swim. At age 64.

It was so much fun that I made an amendment to my #nerdlution: I will watch 1 TED talk per week and take illustrated notes. I'm hoping that these notes yield up some poems in their own time, but I'm not going to make that part of the goal.

Taking these illustrated notes got me thinking (along with Steve and Julieanne and Vicki and Fran) about how we and how our students read and respond to fiction vs. nonfiction. This blending of right-brain note taking with left-brain information processing might be something that will help students move past the WOW of random facts in nonfiction to making deeper connections between ideas and texts. It occurred to me that I had stumbled into this blending by accident when I introduced the option of using a common craft video as the presentation tool for my students' upcoming persuasive essays. It will be fun to see how that turns out in the upcoming weeks.

Yes, today I celebrate the fact that I don't have to commit hours to the fire hoses of information known as FaceBook or Twitter to find ideas that will become thought-changers or game-changers.