I enjoyed this process of turning my notes into visual notes. As I see myself as a visual learner, I often find a desire to do as much of this anyway when I am in the process of taking notes, depending on the class. For example, in an Art History course last semester, drawing small sketches of what was going on in the class proved helpful, in addition to drawing any key visuals on any slideshow into my notebook for other classes. I recognized that this way of thinking takes a little longer, and has points where it feels unnecessarily artistic just to be visual to be visual, but that was may favorite part. I loved drawing little aspects in more creative essays, and being able to practically doodle what I wanted.
For this assignment, I created a visual note to summarize what I learned about Samuel Fusso’s photograph “The Chief WHo Sold Africa to the Colonists” in my art history class.
Even though normally I would also include a fair amount of visuals in my ARTHIST notes — like images of the details of the work or of the other works created by the same artist — I typed out most of the information in a word doc instead of writing them down by hands with doodles on the sides, since for me typing is the easiest and most efficient way to record all the information covered in class in an easily recognizable manner.
So I used this opportunity to create a summary sheet for this particular artwork, and through the process I found it to be a great way to make connections between the various concepts mentioned during class as well as to memorize the key points about the artist and the work.
The sketch above is of a small portion of my Biol 142 class notes. We covered the topics of Mendelian genetics and Meiosis/Mitosis.
I began by first writing all my notes in words and began doodling around them. For the more complex topics, I deleted the texts and substituted them with diagrams as seen on the bottom.
Drawing out my notes was extremely helpful as visuals have always helped me understand complex concepts. Drawing processes helps me visualize the different proteins, molecules, and organelles and how they interact with each other. Doing this Sunday Sketch only further reinforced the benefits that visualizing my notes does for me.
Dan Roam isn’t just right with Business. In fact, the fundamental way mathematicians think is via simple, analytical pictures – simplicity embodies abstractness and generality.
Like most (pure) mathematicians, I believe in the existence of an eternal Platonic garden of forms, in which the most beautiful landscapes hide behind the steepest mountains. Indeed, my most challenging course this semester (Math 523) has introduced me to the most enchanting theorems – Hilbert’s Nullstellensätze (theorem of zeros, hence the title), Snake Lemma and more. As said, these theorems have complicated proofs and could be expressed in jargon-full algebraic terms, but their prettiest facets definitely lie in visualizations; at least, that’s how I would like to picture them. Explanations are provided below the pictures if the viewer happens to be interested.
Nullstellensatz says that there’s a one-to-one correspondence between radical ideals in Polynomial Rings over a Field (upper sphere) and Irreducible Varieties in an Affine Space (lower box). A ring is an abstract algebraic object, an affine space is visual, geometric, and intuitive. This correspondence bridges the abstract and the geometric, hence is a significant theorem of Algebraic Geometry, the most popular field of pure maths today.
The Snake Lemma, probably known by most people via the film It’s My Turn, is a theorem in Homological Algebra whose complexity (as witnessed in the graph) is as notorious as its usefulness. It describes the structure between commutative exact sequences, and especially the snake (from Ker y to Coker \alpha) that generated a whole new exact sequence. Drawing it out is the only way to make this thing penetrable.
Local Ring is a special ring that has a unique maximal ideal consisting of non-unit elements. To me, it has the image of a dragon’s eye. In fact, it’s indeed the “eye” of the “dragon” Algebraic Geometry.
For your sketch assignment this week, I want you to create a set of visual notes for one day in one class (other than this one) that you are currently enrolled in. You do not need to take your visual notes in real time; in fact, I recommend that you don’t. I recommend that you go to your classes and take notes in whatever manner you normally do, then after class go through your notes and recreate them as visual notes.
Below is an example of a professional illustrator creating a set of animated video notes to represent a lecture by Sir Ken Robinson on “Changing Education Paradigms”
You do not need to make a video like this, but only a static image.
You do not need to draw your notes in a digital environment, either, though you are certainly free to do so. If you prefer to doodle with pen, pencil, or marker on paper then do that and once you’re done with your drawing, just scan the pages as JPG files so you can upload them to your site. If you have an iPad or other tablet or would like to draw on your laptop or desktop, then you might try apps like GoodNotes, Procreate, Inkflow, or Adobe’s Sketchbook or search for other free/cheap drawing applications. I am completely tool agnostic on this assignment, so make your drawings in whatever manner make sense to you.
Your visual notes do not need to be polished or beautiful or supremely intricate, like the RSA Animate video above. Do try to take this assignment as an opportunity to really engage differently with your material – don’t just make a series of doodles that follow the outline of the lecture or discussion in your notes but try to translate the concepts and information into a new, visual set of notes. You might think about creating flowcharts or diagrams, which are also visual devices.
Once you’ve got your notes, load them onto your course site as a sketch post. Embed the images from your notes into the post and as you do, take a few moments to reflect on the process and then write a paragraph or two about what you learned during the process of creating your visual notes. Did it help you to understand the course content any differently or better to create notes visually rather than just as text? Did you discover anything new about yourself or the way you think in the process? Did you find it enjoyable or find some aspect of it particularly interesting? Someplace in your reflective text, create a link back to this blog post assignment.
