Reflecting on the 1st #PassTheSketchnote for World Sketchnote Day 2018

#PassTheSketchnote happened on January 11, 2018. Why that date? How did this even happen? What is #PassTheSketchnote? 

The website and community called Sketchnote Army, created by Mike Rhode, declared January 11th World Sketchnote Day a couple of years ago. I had no idea that was a thing! Carrie Baughcum shared a post about it on Instagram, which inspired this thought:  "We should pass around a sketchnote and have people add to it all day!" So, we sent out a Google form to gather names of those who were interested. Carrie posted it on Twitter and we watched (totally amazed) as the interest grew and grew!

The basic plan was for teams of about 5 people from all over the world to contribute to one sketch, and PASS it to next person on the team. With 117 participants, we had about 20 teams, some doing digital sketches and some using paper. Twitter was our "playground". You can click on the following link to see some of the images posted to Twitter for this super fun event: #PassTheSketchnote Images. I loved seeing the images of the sketches as they were in progress and then was WOWed as they were completed.

Did I say how much fun this was? The world came together to draw and share a passion for a pastime that we have been told for so long was only for children. "YAY" is all I can say about the fact that this is NOT true! I'm sure there will be deeper reflections on this topic in the future.

http://daveburgess.com/teach-like-a-pirate-sketchnotes/

This day was already set to be AMAZING, but then DAVE BURGESS posted a blog featuring my Teach Like a Pirate sketchnotes, Carrie's YouTube sketchnote channel, Matt Miller's (Ditch That Textbook) pirate hooks sketchnote, and Julie Woodard's lovely Lead Like a Pirate sketchnote.

I am beyond thrilled that all of this could even happen. Fun fact: Carrie and I have never met! I Twitter-Know her. Isn't this world amazing that we can connect with other people that share our passions, even if they live in Chicago and you're down in Georgia! You don't have to be isolated! That's from Teach Like A Pirate, too! It's an awesome book. Here's some info on the book if you don't already know what it's all about. http://daveburgess.com/teach-like-a-pirate/

Sketchnoting isn't about art, it's about ideas. So next time you need to learn something you should give it a try!

***Watch Carrie's wrap-up video for this awesome day! Youtube video link

Have a great day! Do something positive. 🙂

Monica
@mospillman on Twitter

Our Unplugged Hour of Code

The Hour of Code will be part of Computer Science Education Week (Dec. 4-10, 2017). Hour of Code is one of the great things that will go on that week to promote computer science in education. There's a part of computer science education that doesn't require a computer at all! Some call it "unplugged" computer science. I call it FUN!

I am a Star Wars fan. That's an understatement, but not important to this post. 😀 I take that back! The "P" in "Teach Like a Pirate" stands for PASSION. When our passions and our teaching come together it's a recipe for a great lesson! ☠j

Because of my love of Star Wars I wanted to focus on the fun BB-8 coding activities that are at https://code.org/starwars (we coded with the "block" version, not "Java Script"). Before the students ever touched the Chromebooks we had to get our minds thinking about how we would be able to CODE BB-8's moves to make it to the next level so we played a game to get our brains thinking about coding. The game helped us work on that thinking. It consisted of a board that resembles the scene in the online coding game (a desert) and some cut out game pieces. I put a grid over the desert image so that there were specific squares for making moves.

Have fun coding! I think there's so much fun we can have as we build the thinking that students need for computer science! 🤖

-Monica Spillman (@mospillman on Twitter)

Useful links:

https://code.org http://csunplugged.org/        https://www.madewithcode.com/projects/

https://csedweek.org/ https://csfirst.withgoogle.com/en/home