Graphic Facilitation And Back-To-School Night: Thanks To Our PLN

Source: ASIDE, 2013

We recently finished our back-to-school night with our parents, and thanks to ideas from our PLN, it was quite different from what we’ve done in the past. Instead of the usual distribution of paper outlining our course description, class expectations, and grading policy, we opted for a graphical display of ideas. We’ve participated in workshops, followed discussions on Twitter, and kept up with blogs about graphic facilitation, sketchnotes, and visualizing information to know of their utility. More importantly, though, it has been the connections with other educators in our PLN that have made a difference.

This visualization was done ahead of time and was larger then your typical interactive whiteboard projection. All the talking points, from bullets to images, were large, colorful, and definitely held our parent’s attention. By using graphic facilitation, we needed no notes. The visual notes were right in front of us.

Source: Dave Burgess

Our bullets on passion come directly from the book, Teach Like A Pirate, by Dave Burgess. We have also in the past had the opportunity to see him live. If there is anyone who exudes passion, it’s Dave. For teachers, passion for their content, profession, and personal goals all matter. Like an orchestra, they work together in concert. This is also what we want from our learners, and as educators our job is to cultivate it by letting our kids know that inside and outside, passions matter to learning and to us.

Source: ASIDE, 2013

While we don’t have a pirate in the room, we do have an eight-foot knight. So to teach and learn like one, we decided on three words – loyalty, fearless, and chivalry. Loyalty to each other as a collective whole, fearless about learning, and showing respect are all important to working together in collaboration. Whatever it takes to build that bond is worth it.

Balancing technology and making is also an important part of learning, and kids need to tinker with their hands, grapple with problems, and ponder ideas. As connected educators we want to ensure that our learners are connected in a digital environment, yet we equally value an “I Make” approach that lets them touch materials and not just a screen. We’ve built on this idea from our connections with others in the maker movement, and we stand by our motto "Make It, Own It, Learn It." Striking this balance both in and out of school was a message we wanted our parents to hear, too.

Suffice it to say, using this type of presentation not only enabled us to be more engaged with a room full of parents, but it also gave them a clear understanding that we draw our inspiration from a wealth of educators in our PLNs. So thank you all.

For other posts on connecting with students in and out of school, please see:

• The Secret of "Enrichment" - Humanities For The Ages
• Maps In The Wild

ImageThink: Graphic Facilitation & Big Ideas

Source: ImageThink

We recently attended the hands-on workshop given by ImageThink on graphic facilitation at the New York Peace Institute in Brooklyn's Mediation Center. Nora Herting and Heather Willems founded ImageThink and were the instructors for event. The makeup of the participants were from a variety of different professions who came together to learn how to “picture your big ideas” through the graphic facilitation process. This also made for a diverse sharing of ways we planned to use it in our own work experiences.

The roster of activities for the day provided a variety of approaches to the process, including graphic recording, drawing with the whole body, learning to listen, and more. Since so much of it was hands-on, the participants were able to get a real sense of what it takes to graphically produce notes in a non-linear way. We worked on large white paper, 48 inches in width and 8-10 feet long. After each lesson we discussed how we arrived at our image boards and received constructive feedback from the instructors.

Source: ImageThink

Using this method changes the view of the information. Essentially, graphic facilitation records ideas as they are being said. To do this effectively requires good listening skills to focus on the main idea and key points of the presentation to parse the necessary pieces of information to communicate ideas. In other words, the content is designed visually to make connections using words, images and numbers. It was also quite clear that it would be difficult to graphically facilitate a meeting and run it at the same time, and it came as no surprise that many of us wished we had had another day to learn even more. The following is a video demonstration from ImageThink showing how graphic facilitation works.



As teachers, we could also see that the process, although not complex, would require practicing before asking students to try it. Listening to audio such as a TED talk and then trying to graphically represent what is being said is a good place to start. Another exercise to help practice the process is to convert a standard PowerPoint presentation into a single page graphic summary. The added value to using this with students is the ability to present information clearly and concisely. It's also a creative and engaging way to help kids focus by captivating the content in a visual way. 

Headings, color, and size impact how the ideas are communicated, and the relationship between the words and images begin to rise to the surface. The ideation that sometimes starts in the minutia moves front and center, and the higher level points become actionable. To have kids use this method to graphically represent content will help train them to visual think about the key components of a topic. After all, don’t we constantly talk to them about figuring out the main idea and supporting details? Well, graphic facilitation is just another way of doing it.

Source: ImageThink Gallery

The ImageThink website is loaded with resources to help teachers get started. You can also follow them on Facebook and the Twitter hashtag is #ImageThink.