I recently came across the tweet below from edutopia that shares some very interesting research about students who draw as part of their note-taking. In the study, students who drew information remembered nearly twice as much as students who wrote it! Watch the full two-minute video below:

The video gives some great ideas for how teachers can incorporate drawing into their everyday routines, but it also made me think about how we could utilize our classroom touch screen boards for drawing information as a station in a blended learning classroom.

I created the super simple Google Drawing template below (which you can get a copy of and edit with your key content vocabulary).

To play, pull up the google drawing template on your class touch screen board – or use a different touch screen device such a chromebook – and select the Scribble Tool (Insert, Line, Scribble) to enable you to draw directly into Google Drawings (whether with your finger or a stylus).

Here’s what the template looks like – but to try it out, you’ll have to download a copy into your drive and try the scribble tool with your touch screen device.

Other ideas for this learning station would be to have a small group of students start by brainstorming 4-8 terms they think are most important from what they’ve been learning about. Then, they can sketch or draw these key terms to help themselves remember, as the research indicates.

For even more fun, small groups could challenge each other to guess the key vocabulary words based on their drawings, Pictionary-style! All can be done using a blank Google Drawing and selecting the scribble tool (Insert, Line, Scribble).

Other options for drawing on your SmartBoard, Promethean, or chromebook or other touch screen devices include using ClassFlow.com or awwapp.com – both free online whiteboards (that offer other features as well).

One more option – especially for those who might be intimidated by drawing in front of others is autodraw.com. This site uses Artificial Intelligence to guess what you are drawing as you draw with options at the top of the screen. As soon as you see what you were trying to draw, you can click on the image at the top of the screen you like and your drawing snaps into the perfect icon form of the suggestion you chose! Check out my example of a student drawing “setting” using autodraw.com below:

How else can you get students drawing using your touch screen board? I’d love to hear from you in the comments!