It has been awhile since I have done live sketchnotes but when someone gives me a blank notebook, I have to break it in. I attended the EdTech Team Summit in Roseville over the weekend and received a new Rocketbook. Even though I brought my iPad for this purpose, I briefly took it out of my bag and put it back in exchange for pens.

Of course, the sketchnote on Accessibility is my favorite because it provided an opportunity to combine my two passions--Creating and Increasing Awareness on Accessible Design. This was a regular session, presented by Adina Sullivan-Morrow and having a lot of background knowledge of the content helped a lot during the creation process. Also, the impact of having a flat table surface and not having to worry about your losing any of your pens is not to be overrated.

This week I began creating patterns as part of the Creative Bug 31 Days of Patterns Class taught by Lisa Congdon. The focus has been on basic patterns such as gingham, basket weave, argyle and more using gouache paint. (Gouache paint is a more opaque watercolor.)

Pattern making is so relaxing, comforting, and incredibly meditative. The repetitive brush marks allow me to focus on the brush strokes and connection to the paper. I see why Zentangle is so popular. I see lots of patterns in my sketchbook in the future.

Creative Imperfection with Coding

It also got me to thinking about patterns in general. In school, we teach patterns very early. During CS Week and Hour of Code in December, I visited numerous TK, Kindergarten, and first-grade classrooms with Ozobots and we talked about, read, and explored different patterns.

"Blue, Black, Blue." Let's see what Ozzy does. About 60% of the time Ozzy went noticeably faster after traveling over this code to the screams of delight of students. In fact, that's the fast code that helped encourage students to play with patterns and discover other codes for their robot.