Giulia Forsythe has been at Brock University’s Centre for Pedagogical Innovation since 2005, where she started as the Special Projects Facilitator. As the Director, Teaching and Learning, she continues to support the lofty goals of education to transform lives through high quality teaching, learning, research, and a commitment to equity, justice, and accessibility situated within our community.
Becca
How wonderful to finally have the opportunity to talk with Giulia Forsythe–someone who we’ve been talking about in our learning community for years. Giulia began with a land acknowledgment that emphasized how creative pedagogy fosters an understanding of place and partnership with people who’ve been here for time immemorial. She talked about how adopting creative pedagogies allow us to normalize change and growth, rather than becoming static in our teaching.
Giulia’s epiphany about visual notetaking began with technology. Using an iPad, and especially having a drawing app that used layers, made it much easier to take visual notes. The black and white markings go on one layer, and the colors go on other layers. During the process of notetaking, adding color gives her a lift when she finds that energy begins to fade. To make her mindmaps accessible, she goes back to add alt-text, a metacognitive step that allows her to double check the messages in the notes. How are these accessible?
I would love to learn visual notetaking like this–not only for myself, but also to model for students. Watching someone take visual notes makes the words come alive in a fundamentally different way. Giulia emphasized that it’s a process to learn how to take notes like this. The group brainstormed on resources that help learn fundamental shapes to incorporate into mindmaps, like circles, lines, squares, and spirals. Nathalie recommended this site about sketchnote journaling, and Todd recommended this book by Lynda Barry. Of course, Giulia’s own site has wonderful examples, and she has also blogged about starting visual notetaking.
In a wonderful creative and inclusive turn in the conversation, we also talked about the fact that visual notetaking doesn’t work for everyone. One professor commented that Giulia’s notes were a “reflection of her chaotic mind”–perhaps note the kindest observation, despite being a way to remind folks that we learn and process information differently. We talked about different ways of taking notes, from writing while listening (as I did here), to writing a narrative after the fact (as Todd does), to drawing.
Todd
What a gift to be able to spend time with someone like Giulia while she is in a used bookstore. Anywhere, of course, but a used bookstore is like the perfect environment for our “epiphany” sessions. Maybe better than the campfire?
I feel so fortunate to have made the kinds of connections in the field from the #ds106 digital storytelling community. 14 years ago, many of the people I found there were in different positions or different institutions. Giulia has been at Brock for 20 years! Wow.
Right off the bat Giulia started with the map of where she is. Good storytelling. Begin where you are. And she shared that on a map of the earth and then added the layer of traditional territories of native peoples. And the way she expressed that was so beautiful. The site she used is https://native-land.ca/
At some point Giulia references the magic, or “bags of gold” related to the ability to do some of these graphic collaborations. Like her drawings being shared and or collaborations between people making them. Yes to the magic! That magic of human created designs, human mistakes, humans working together in a space with color, symbols, and words. That seems like a good place to learn something.