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"

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.