Several years ago, a fellow educator, Amber Grohs on Twitter sent me a sketchnote she had created from reading the first few pages of the Loose Parts Play: A Toolkit document. Immediately I loved the layout, look and feel of her work. Sketchnoting is a process which aims to capture the key points of any talk, book or presentation.

It is not about being an artist or a doodler. It’s a systematic approach to summarising information. The process of creating a sketchnote is more of a multi-sensory approach than simply note taking.

A couple of weeks ago, whilst participating in the Rhythm of Nature Conference, I met a fellow outdoor educator, Tanya Murray, whom I knew via Twitter. In fact we had even under taken a professional book swap about a year ago. It turned out, she was a keen sketch noter. You can see her sketchnote of my keynote presentation above.

One afternoon during the week, she kindly set aside some time to support myself and several other attendees to grasp the basics of the approach. You can see my first attempts, on a small whiteboard above. It’s very much a first try as it does take a bit of practice. I then went on to develop the above into what you can see below – my third attempt:

On my way home, I didn’t sleep much. Instead I practised sketch noting. I bought a notebook with dotty pages, as advised by Tanya. Initially I did need to plan ahead. The downside of a book is you can’t rub out your mistakes.

At the moment my first drafts are still a little rough and ready:

My temptation is always to go more back to note-taking:

Tanya had some stencils which may suit me. She doesn’t use them but they are good provocations for symbols. I’m slowly developing a bank of symbols and images to quickly represent key points.

There are lots of drawing apps which can be used to also complete a sketchnote. They do not have to be hand drawn but lend themselves well to the versatility of a tablet or iPad to shrink or expand images and words, import photos and so on. Tanya recommended looking at the work of Sylvia Duckworth who is a Canadian teacher who has a fantastic and helpful website. She provides advice about good apps and has lots of tips, hints and material to help get you started.

Over the years I’ve used it to capture my thoughts when listening to presentations. It helps me focus. Also I’ve experimented with digital sketchnoting:

I think sketch noting has lots of potential in an outdoor context. Firstly many children love this approach according to the Canadian teachers that I chatted with. Next, it can happen anywhere – you need paper, clipboard and a good array of coloured pens. It’s another way of capturing an outdoor session with children.

Interestingly, Education Scotland has also started sketch noting good practice. I think it has the potential to turn rather dry self-evaluation documents and reports into something much more succinct and visually interesting. It could be a good way for practitioners and teachers to reflect upon a training session or to capture observations of a child. After all, as a parent, a sketchnote may be more appealing than a written observation. Thus I’d be interested to know how others are using this technique – outside or in.

This blog post was originally published in September 2018.