Tag: sunday funnies

Sunday Funnies 3: Visual Note Taking

Visual Note Taking

Visual note taking is something that I have never tried before but I found this technique incredibly interesting. I decided to create my project based on my Health 200 class. This is a class that prepares you to be a PHP (peer health partner). We spoke a lot about the roles that we play as a PHP as well as how students only get as much as we put into the presentation. Similarly, we focused a lot on the determinants of health such as environment, behavior, and biology.

I didn’t that that this assignment was too hard, especially since I find that most of the material that was covered in this lecture was very much common sense. While I did enjoy taking these notes, I do not think that I will use this technique often, especially for normal class lectures. I do think that this skill may be incredible helpful for exam prep though. For classes that are concept based, it seems as though taking visual notes on the material covered could be a great way to study and enforce the information before the exam!

 

Sunday Funnies 3: Visual Note Taking


Visual notes 1visual notes 2I decided to take visual notes for my Anthropology 101 class this week. In this particularly class, our teacher lectured on “The Darwinian Revolution”. In particular, we learned about natural selection and evolution. During the class I used my regular style of note taking and then after class I transformed my notes into visual notes.

The process of taking visual notes was very enjoyable for me because I am very creative and love to draw/doodle. Taking visual notes forced me to understand and think about the course content in a different light. Drawing the content I learned in class helped me visualize the process of natural s election and evolution more clearly. Visual note taking forced me to analyze the material instead of aimlessly repeating my teacher’s words verbatim into my notebook. Tow problems I faced during this assignment where that it took me a considerably longer time to draw out my notes and it was difficult for me to organize them. Although I cannot see myself continuing to take visual notes in the future, I enjoyed trying it out!

Sunday Funnies 3: Visual Note Taking

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.

Sunday Funny# 3

 

Sunday Funny #3

Sunday Funny #3

Taking visual notes was an extremely challenging experience for me. When I first saw the examples I hoped to create a similar result, however, after 6 drafts I realized that my drawing skills were those of a six years old. I decided to use this opportunity to study the concept of logical fallacies, which we learned last week in my psychology class. Despite the difficulty of this assignment, I now understand the fallacies better and I was able to understand the relationship as well as the differences between them.
When I was creating the visual notes, the most challenging part of the process (besides the drawing itself) was to make a cohesive picture. At first I began to create small drawings at the corners of the page. However, I wanted to find a way to connect those drawings, in a way that made sense both conceptually, and visually. Therefore I decided to take on several themes instead of a bunch of independent drawings. I used the importance of school, the need for food and several philosophical ideas as the mean themes of my visual notes. The use of arrows also proved extremely efficient when connecting ideas. Another challenging part of this assignment was trying to stay away from creating a comic “book”. In several occasions I leaned towards expressing a concept using conversations between characters. However, at the end of the process, I understood the notes that I had taken in a distinct way, instead of words in my head, when approaching the concept of fallacies, I now see images, which makes it easier to understand such an abstract topic.

To see other visual notes click here.

 

 

 

Sunday Funny 3: Visual Notes

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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.

Sunday Funnies 3: Visual Note Taking

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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.

A Visual Look at my Polisci Methods Class

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 visual drawing 1Sunday Funnies visual drawing 2

Visual Note Taking

Sunday Funnies 3

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

Sunday Funnies 3: Visual Note Taking

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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.

Sunday Funnies 3: Visual Note Taking

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I decided to take visual notes  for two classes this week.  Neither class covered that much content, so I did not find it particularly challenging to capture the essence of either class in one page of visual notes. In the first class, Health 200, we discussed the different roles a PHP takes when leading a class.  The second, Anthropology 101, we discussed Charles Darwin and his discovers.

The process of visual note taking itself was actually very enjoyable. I found myself struggling (in a good way) with the material in a way I have never done before. I was forced to not only understand and visualize the material in my head, but I had to put those thoughts into presentable drawings. It is one thing to take traditional notes, often a tedious task of copying down what is on the board and the important additions of what comes out of your professors mouth. Visual notes on the other hand force you to capture both aspects of note taking, while also limiting your word usage and representing them through a new and fun medium. I am not sure I can see myself using visual notes a lot in my future, but I can definitely see it being a better use of my time rather than aimlessly doodling in class!

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