Experiments in Visual Writing

After taking visual notes in my Astronomy class, I can definitely say that I better understand the material. I’ve always been a visual learner, and after looking through the pictures that I drew, the concepts became clearer than before. The pictures were especially helpful with learning the phases of the moon. When just describing where the Moon is in regards to the Earth and Sun, it is hard to distinguish which phase is occurring at a certain time of day. When viewing a drawing of the Moon in between the Earth and the Sun, it’s clear that the Moon is at the New Moon phase. I found it interesting how much easier it was to understand certain content when drawing it.

I decided to explore the visual note taking skill using my Chem 142 notes. The hard part about this assignment was figuring out which class would this be the most useful. I have a test coming up in chemistry and using this skill I was able to grasp the concept of phase changes and intermolecular forces vs intramolecular forces better. I combined the concepts together through the use of pictures and diagrams. Even though I have never used this note taking skill it help me study better. I will definitely consider using this method more often especially in chemistry.

I used a mixture of words and pictures for my notes because on test I would have to explain for example what constitutes a hydrogen intermolecular force etc. While transferring that idea to pictures, it is really important in chemistry to be able to explain what is actually happening. So after drawing the pictures of the phase diagrams and the different intermolecular forces, I included key ideas to tie the two concepts together and quizzed myself by identifying the pictures with the corresponding explanations of the intermolecular forces.

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.