Visual journaling: a creative way to learn and reflect
How a tool designed for Elementary School children unleashed a powerful reflection on our shared learning experience at the 2020 Summer Institute in Digital Literacy.
How do you capture the rich texture and the intensity of the learning at the Summer Institute in Digital Literacy? As the all-online, any time plus real time SIDL2020 sessions started, I was looking for ways to combine our digital note-taking arsenal — notes, links, screen captures and photos — into one powerful and cohesive narrative, one that would both store the main takeaways and convey some sense of the multilayered experience.
I was inspired both by Kristin Ziemke’s observations on visual literacy and Dr. Joyce Valenza’s thoughts on curating as storytelling. I wanted to tell the story of my learning in SIDL2020 in a visual, yet not superficial, way. The solution was simple, elegant and oh so fun to create: a scrapbook made in Book Creator.
As a designer, I understand the value of thinking visually to connect ideas and discover possibilities, and I think that this a very underused technique in a learning context. Digital journaling is much more intriguing to me than making mind maps, because it allows us to curate multimedia content and contribute our own thoughts in a creative, non-linear and layered fashion.
I found Book Creator to be the perfect tool for that. It is accessible, with a quick learning curve. It is made for kids, and therefore has limited design features — but I love the way in which it freed me from some of the more technical intricacies of design, such page structure and finely tuned typography, and placed my focus squarely on storytelling. Still, because I am a trained designer, I was able to control some details such as information architecture, hierarchy and consistency in type styles for better results — and those are all elements we can show learners as we build up their storytelling skills.
I can see how we might ask educators to keep a visual journal of their learning journeys, a creative way to get them to capture the essencial thoughts and reflect on their learning. Like creating and journaling in the analog world, I would encourage them to jot down quick thoughts and notes in real time, then come back to add images and links later; or, alternatively, they can take down notes in their preferred way, then create the digital journal at a later point. I do find, though, that it is best to capture ideas as they are fresh, and that is why I did my journaling every night during SIDL.
One difficulty in our context might be the level of digital fluency in general, as you need some command of digital tools and spaces to orchestrate the flow of taking notes, doing screen captures and taking photos to illustrate your scrapbook. But, again, this task might just provide the right combination of challenge and play to help us build up teachers’ command of digital storytelling.
