Tag: sf3

I hardly ever take visual notes, but after this assignment I might do it more frequently. I made these notes for my Chemistry 142 class. Most people don’t think science and drawing go together but after making these visual notes, I think they do. Many concepts in science can be explained with visuals. This assignment was more difficult than I thought it would be. Most of the things we learn in chemistry are done by reading or just doing problems. Taking concepts from the reading and making them into visuals actually helped me grasp a better understanding of them. I believe I will think about concepts, not just in chemistry but other classes as well, in a more visual manner. It makes you think in a different manner and truly understand what you’re learning. Moving away from reading and just doing problems to learn was pretty interesting and to be honest, somewhat refreshing.

I really enjoyed this Sunday Funnies segment but it wasn’t as easy as I imagined it would be. I’m not the most experienced artist but I find it funny how my scribbly cursive translates into such comical cartoons. The material was pretty straightforward so I won’t say it exactly helped me understand the lecture differently. I also wouldn’t say that I would do this in class, because it takes a lot of time to get the doodles– crude as they are– to my liking. Something I noticed was that most of the characters I drew were male, to my chagrin. I think I drew them male mostly because I just can’t doodle hair well, so I would avoid drawing women with beautiful, wispy hair. So anyway, I enjoyed my time with this assignment, so thank you Professor! Here’s a link back to his site where you can view our original project here. Enjoy! 

Sunday Funnies 3: Visual Note Taking

I did my visual note taking for chemistry 142. In class we talked about things such as unit cells, lattice points, and phase diagrams. I tried to the best of my not-so-artistic ability to give representations of each of these. I used chemistry because a visual diagram is very useful in chemistry. Transferring my thoughts into pictures really helped me gain a better understanding of unit cells and lattice points. This is the first time I have used visual note taking, but I believe I will use it frequently in the future.

The graph in the top left below “chem 142″ is a phase diagram. Instead of writing in each space “solid, liquid, gas” respectively, I decided to draw how the molecules appear in each phase. Directly to the right of the phase diagram is a three dimensional sketch of a unit cell. It has a lattice point in the corners and makes up a total of one atom. Below the phase diagram and unit cell is the formula used to calculate the volume of the unit cell. Because the atoms are spheres it is the formula for the volume of a sphere. I played on the name pi and drew a picture of a pie.

 

,Greer Howard

It really helped me highlight the key points and allowed me to put all the main topics together. This allowed me to really focus on the key ideas and I didn’t have to be so overwhelmed with all the little details in my handwritten notes from class. By adding images, it drew my attention and really helped me retain information better. I feel like images, at times, can really convey a message better than words can. In this case, images allow me to link all the information from lectures together that words aren’t able to do (or can’t do as easily).

This alternative note-taking strategy made me realize how the information I learned in class all fits together. I’ve realized that I’m a really visual learner and that looking at pictures can allow me to recall information more. I found it pretty enjoyable to doodle around and was interestingly very relaxing. Although, the drawings took a lot longer than I expected, since I’m not a very artistic person. I also found it interesting how I was able to bring my notes together to a few main points to focus on because when I looked over my lecture notes I felt like there were many more topics that were covered. I find it really amusing how such a simple idea can really allow for me to retain information more efficiently and thus, increasing my knowledge in a particular subject.

I’ve always took notes on a notebook, with mostly texts. I’ve never really have thought of arranging my notes with drawing representing concepts in notes. It was interesting to create a visual note, but I’ve face several problems in the creation of it. First of all, I struggled to decide on how I should format the note, so that it looks the best. I also had to think thoroughly on how to visually represent concepts and ideas, like using a padlock to represent of Java being a secure programming language. It also took me quite some time to actually draw and include all the materials I’ve learnt in one class. On the bright side, however, taking effort to visualize concepts and drawing them out really made me think through them, and allowed me for a deeper understanding of the materials. In conclusion, it was interesting and a fresh approach of note-taking for me. It greatly facilitated in helping me understand the concepts more easily. However, as a college student with a busy schedule, I think visual note-taking isn’t the best way to create notes.

 

Assignment link

 

http://eng101s15.davidmorgen.org/2015/01/sunday-funnies-3/

While making this doodle, I noticed a few things about myself. It was somewhat easier than expected and sort of relaxing to get to draw for homework. However, I did not particularly feel like I better grasped the material because of the doodling. I picked to draw my calculus notes because my options were not the best–I don’t take notes in Health 200 or French 203 and I could’ve drawn out my chemistry notes, but I felt like that would be confusing and challenging. So math was my only viable option, which felt a little bit like a terrible option because most of my math notes are just practice problems. However, I cheated a little ad used notes from several different days and chose really basic calculus topics. That being said, I feel like these notes only make sense to me due to my lacking artistic skills, but I guess that is okay.